The Milky Way and the Local Group -
Now and in the
Gaia Era
August 31 to September 4, 2009
Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg
Topics
We will have both plenary and parallel sessions. We plan to accommodate between 100 and 120 talks. There is also plenty of space for poster presentations.
Topics we expect to discuss include:
- Formation of the Milky Way and of the Local Group: Cosmology, reionization and suppression of star formation, number of halos, theoretically expected properties, signatures of infall ("planes" of satellites, dwarf group infall?).
- The least massive Local Group inhabitants: Dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Census and global properties, missing satellite problem, evolutionary histories, detailed chemistry, inhomogeneities, orbits and disruption, ram pressure stripping.
- The Galactic halo: halo structure, kinematics, chemistry; inner/outer halo dichotomy, detailed element abundances, extremely metal-poor stars, globular clusters, accretion signatures and streams.
- The Galactic bulge, bar, center: Ages, star formation history, chemistry, structure, kinematics. Halo vs. bulge. M31's bulge.
- The Galactic thin and thick disk: Structure, ages, chemistry, gradients, origin, overdensities (CMa, Virgo...), moving groups.
- The Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way: Global properties and structure of the Clouds, chemical evolution and star formation history, orbits and interaction.
- M31 and M33: The giant stream, Structure and properties of halo and disk, chemistry, evolution.
- Gaia: The Gaia mission, Gaia science overview, Galactic research with Gaia.
- Other space astrometry survey projects: Nano-JASMINE, JASMINE, SIM; scientific prospects and interplay with Gaia.
- Other Galactic survey projects: SDSS, RAVE, Pan-STARRS, LAMOST, SSS, LSST, EUCLID, ...; scientific prospects and interplay with Gaia.
- Gaia techniques and challenges; and ELSA.
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