Gaia: The (TWO) Billion Star Galaxy Census: The Science of EDR3 and the promise of DR3

The next Gaia/GREAT/MW-Gaia plenary convenes at the EAS 2022 meeting in Valencia https://eas.unige.ch/EAS2022/index.jsp as:

Symposium 12 : Gaia: The (TWO) Billion Star Galaxy Census: The Dawn of Gaia DR3 (27-28 June 2022) - see https://eas.unige.ch/EAS2022/session.jsp?id=S12

Our symposium outline programme is:

• Gaia DR3: Highlight Science including presentations from the Gaia DR3 performance verification paper teams
• Gaia / GREAT/MW-Gaia / Gaia Unlimited Status
• Gaia EDR3/DR3: Highlight Science (The Milky Way as a Galaxy)
• Gaia EDR3/DR3: Highlight Science (The Birth, Life and Death of Stars)
• Gaia EDR3/DR3: Highlight Science (from Solar system to reference frames)
• Gaia networking and ground based synergies with Gaia
• Lunch session with an update on the Gaia Archive, and update on the ESA Voyage 2050 L mission concept (GaiaNIR), and also an opportunity for poster presenters to deliver a 'lightening' talk of their (e-)poster.

As in previous Gaia/GREAT symposia at EAS/EWASS meetings, we’ll aim to devote most of the symposium time to contributed talks, so please do submit an abstract.

Take a look at the presentations from our symposium at last year’s EAS 2021 - see http://great.ast.cam.ac.uk/Greatwiki/GreatMeet-PM14 - this year we’ll follow a similar concept and will include a set of ePoster lightening presentations for at least some of the eposters. This will take place during the lunch session on Tues 28 June 2022.

We’ll be putting upon the talks after the meeting on the wiki page at http://great.ast.cam.ac.uk/Greatwiki/GreatMeet-PM15

Please do register - https://eas.unige.ch/EAS_meeting/registration.jsp - very early registration runs to 20 Feb 2022, early registration till 29 Apr and regular registration till 26 Jun 2022.

Abstracts can be submitted at https://eas.unige.ch/EAS_meeting/abstract_submission.jsp - closing date 1 March 2022 - so not so long now!

Finally, the meeting is planned to be an in person event and in principle you’ll need to be at the meeting to give your presentation. I think the meeting will be very exciting, so hopefully as many of you as possible can get there.

As an aside - on travel support - EAS have some funds available - see https://eas.unige.ch/EAS_meeting/grants.jsp - closing date for applications 1 March 2022

Also, there are opportunities for support through the MW-Gaia programme, especially if you are located in an ITC- see https://www.mw-gaia.org/participate/itc-grants/ for details.

Looking forward to seeing many of you in Valencia in June 2022.

Yours, Nic Walton

• (on behalf of the Symposium 12 SOC).