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OATS-UNI/TS SEMINAR
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Speaker: Antonella Vallenari (INAF - OAPD)

Title: The Gaia-ESO survey
Date: Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
Time: 15:00
Venue: Villa Bazzoni
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Abstract: Understanding the formation mechanism, past and present structure, and evolutionary history of the Milky Way is one of the intellectual challenges faced by modern astrophysical research. The ESA Cornerstone Gaia Mission will improve our present knowledge of the Galaxy formation and stellar evolution. In addition to proper motions, parallaxes and magnitudes, Gaia will provide spectrophotometry of stars down to V=20 mag, and high resolution spectra of stars down to V= 16.5 mag. All those spectra will be studied and classified to derive stellar parameters. The direct determination of the 6D Galaxy phase space distribution as well as of the chemical abundance of large and complete samples of stellar populations will make it possible to interpret coherently the evolutionary scenarios of the whole Milky Way. Several follow-up projects have been forseen to cover the regions where Gaia will not be able to deliver data. Here we summarize the status of the mission, and we briefly discuss the follow-up projects, focusing on the Gaia ESO survey recently approved by ESO.
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Contact: Marco Fulle (OATS)