Joint Astrophysical Colloquium
Star clusters, the Milky Way, and the Gaia revolution
Tristan Cantat-Gaudin (MPIA Heidelberg)
Thursday 03/02/2022 @ 11:30, Remote Talk
Reconstructing the morphology of the Milky Way from our vantage point is a complicated task. Star clusters have been used as a convenient tracer of the Galactic structure for almost a century. Their ages and distances are easier to estimate than for most other astronomical objects. The ongoing ESA Gaia mission is transforming our understanding of the Milky Way structure and history by providing astrometric data of unprecedented precision. The amount of new data and the high dimensionality of the catalogues require new approaches for data analysis. In this new paradigm, star clusters are still relevant objects of interest. During this talk I will review some results enabled by Gaia DR2 and EDR3 in the discovery and characterisation of clusters, and what these findings tell us about the present state of the Milky Way and its evolutionary history.