On April 25, 2018, the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission made public its second data release (DR2). In it contained the position on the sky, motion on the sky, and apparent shifts of 1.3 billion objects. It additionally contained radial velocities (and thus full 3D positions and velocities) for 7.2 million objects. This data set is completely unprecedented. The previous best catalogue from the Hipparcos mission (published in 1997) contained a measly 118,000 objects. Gaia DR2 has ushered in a revolutionary era in our understanding of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.<br/><br/>Free from the shackles of producing results of societal importance, astronomy can experiment in scientific methodology. Gaia DR2 is no exception, with the entire dataset made public with no proprietary period. That is, no novel scientific analysis was performed by the Gaia mission. As a result, all scientific results were generated by the community in a flurry of activity after data release. We will discuss this unique aspect of astronomy, and the implications of such a policy, with a brief overview of the dramatic discoveries made. We will then discuss two of our projects that make use of Gaia DR2, highlighting the creative analyses now possible.

Gaia: A new era of the Milky Way

2019 Spring National Meeting

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