NEWS: 20111003: The next call to support networking activities is now open with a deadline Mon 5th Dec 2011. Please check the Calls pages for CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS, EXCHANGE VISITS and TRAINING SCHOOLS for full details.
NEWS: 20110928: The 5th GREAT Plenary will be held 4-6 July 2012 in Rome. The days 5-6 July 2012 will be in the form of a science symposium within the EAS European Week of Astronomy (EWASS 2012).
Get involved by:
- taking part in GREAT sponsored meetings and events, or apply for funds to support your own networking activities.
- The GREAT wiki has links to the GREAT Working Groups and discussion areas. Sign up to the working groups there.
- The Announcement mailing list archive has general email announcements
- Read the GREAT ESF Programme Proposal to find out more.
Introduction to GREAT
GREAT is a pan European science driven research infrastructure which will facilitate, through focused interaction on a European scale, the fullest exploitation of the ESA Gaia 'cornerstone' astronomy mission, enabling the European astronomy community to provide answers to the key challenges in our understanding of the Galaxy and Universe.
Gaia is scheduled for launch in May 2013. It is designed to map over one billion stars with three instruments to collect astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic data on stars in the Milky Way and in galaxies belonging to the Local Group, distant galaxies, quasars and solar system objects. Gaia builds on the expertise established in Europe through the successful ESA Hipparcos mission.
GREAT is the programme which will bring together relevant scientific expertise by promoting topical workshops, training events, exchange visits, conferences and so forth with the aim of addressing the major scientific issues that the Gaia satellite will impact upon. This movie produced by ESA provides a nice summary of how Gaia will revolutionise our knowledge of the Milky Way and wider Universe.
GREAT Network Science Areas
GREAT provides support through its European Science Foundation Research Networking Programme for a wide range of community proposed events covering the key objective areas of the programme, largely focussed on gaining a deeper understanding of our Milky Way.These key topic areas are:
• Origin, structure, and evolution of the Milky Way
• Stellar astrophysics
• Galactic Dynamics
• Galactic Archaeology
• Star Formation and evolution
• Fundamental physics and the Reference Frame
• Extrasolar planets
• Binary Stars
• The Solar system
• The IT Data Challenge from Gaia
In addition, through the lifetime of the programme, specific areas for prioritisation maybe highlighted, as reported at the GREAT plenary meetings.
Page revised: 28 September 2011 by NAW