[ASA] The Gaia Relay

[Andy Casey]

Hi folks,

We write to advertise the 2026 Gaia Relay: a sequence of three Gaia DR4 Sprint events to be held in three consecutive weeks, in three cities, passing the baton westward around following the release of Gaia DR4. The 2026 Gaia Relay is an experiment on how we organize conferences, inspired by the well-attended Gaia Sprints. It is one event, with three legs: participants, projects, and interim results will benefit from one leg to the next.

The Relay events will be small in-person gatherings around the release date of Gaia DR4. The idea will be to make preliminary investigations with Gaia DR4 data and build new scientific collaborations, locally and globally.

Gaia DR4 is the full data release from the nominal Gaia mission, and will include — for the first time — epoch-level astrometry, photometry, and spectroscopy, along with the much-anticipated catalog of non-single stars and exoplanet candidates.

Applications for the 2026 Gaia Relay are now open, and will close on September 16 (in whatever your timezone is).

Please forward this email to anyone who might be interested, and apologies if you get this signal multiple times.

With thanks, on behalf of:

• Megan Bedell (Flatiron)
• Anthony Brown (Leiden; Gaia/DPAC chair)
• Andy Casey (Flatiron) (Monash)
• Thavisha Dharmawardena (Monash)
• Kareem El Badry (Caltech)
• Jackie Faherty (AMNH)
• David W Hogg (NYU) (MPIA) (Flatiron)
• Casey Lam (Carnegie)
• Melissa Ness (ANU)
• Adrian Price-Whelan (Flatiron)
• Hans-Walter Rix (MPIA)
• Dominick Rowan (Berkeley)


ANDY CASEY He/Him
Research Scientist
Center for Computational Astrophysics
Flatiron Institute

and

Associate Professor
School of Physics and Astronomy
Monash University

646.944.6198 mobile
646.876.5965 office
acasey at flatironinstitute.org
162 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/imyXCBNqjlCMwwqoLCzfyWh288K4?domain=simonsfoundation.org


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