Mapping Gaia Parallax Systematic Errors over the Sky with Faint Milky Way Stars

Gaia: Origin and Evolution of the Milky Way

GAIA is a short-listed candidate for the ESA Cornerstone mission C5, meeting the ESA Survey Committee requirement for an observatory mission, dedicated to astrometry, providing 10 micro-arcsecond accuracy at 15th magnitude. The GAIA mission concept follows the dramatic success of the ESA HIPPARCOS mission, utilising a continuously scanning spacecraft, accurately measuring 1-D coordinates along ...

luminosity function of faint point sources in the Milky Way

We assess contribution to the X-ray (above 2 keV) luminosity of the Milky Way from different classes of low-mass binary systems and single stars. We begin by using the RXTE Slew Survey of the sky at |b| > 10 to construct an X-ray luminosity function (XLF) of nearby X-ray sources in the range 10 erg s < Lx < 10 34 erg s (where Lx is the luminosity over 2–10 keV), occupied by coronally active bin...

The Gaia mission Pulsating stars with Gaia

Gaia is a cornerstone mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) selected in 2000, with a target launch date of 2011. The Gaia mission will perform a survey of about 1 billion sources brighter than V = 20. Its goal is to provide astrometry leading to parallaxes, proper-motions and positions. Astrometric data are complemented by multicolour photometry and a spectroscopic instrument (up to V = 17...

The Faint Radio Sky

The earliest stars and their relics in the Milky Way

We have implemented a simple model to identify the likely sites of the first stars and galaxies in the high-resolution simulations of the formation of galactic dark matter halos of the Aquarius Project. The first star in a galaxy like the Milky Way formed around redshift z = 35; by z = 10, the young galaxy contained up to ∼ 3 × 10 dark matter haloes capable of forming stars by molecular hydroge...