Speaker
Description
The data products of the Gaia mission are revolutionizing our understanding of the Galaxy, producing huge scientific advancements in virtually any field of astrophysics. However, the ~2 billion stars measured by Gaia represent only 1% of our Galaxy. Since Gaia is observing in the visible, we face severe limitations in the crucial inner regions of the Galaxy (disk, bulge, bar and Galactic centre) that are heavily obscured by interstellar dust. While the Gaia Consortium is working towards the 4th and 5th data releases, the scientific community is preparing a Gaia-like survey mission expanding the wavelength range to the NIR, GaiaNIR. A white paper (Hobbs et al. 2021) was submitted to the ESA call Voyage 2050. In the Voyage 2050 final recommendations, the expert panel identified GaiaNIR as one of the top priorities for a future L mission under the “From temperate exoplanets to the Milky Way” theme. In this talk we will present the GaiaNIR science case and preparation status.
