Science Seminar. Follow live - 3 October @ 10:30h - "Visualizing a billion stars for science and education"

In this talk, Jackie Faherty will review how the European Space Agency's second catalog of the Gaia mission (Gaia DR2) is revolutionizing astronomy. Arguably all scientific questions can benefit from the nearly 1.4 billion parallaxes and proper motions, over 7 million radial velocities, photometric data in Gaia’s three bands (G, R, and B), variability information, and effective temperatures for a subset of objects. The Gaia results provide a unique opportunity for astronomers, data visualizers, and educators. Stellar positions and velocities enable us to map the Milky Way and examine the dynamics of stellar streams, co-moving companions, hypervelocity stars,  nearby moving groups, and solar system encounters.  From a visualization perspective, real time rendering of Gaia data is a challenge. 

During the presentation, Jackie Faherty will show the results of the visualization efforts with the Gaia catalog currently on-going at the American Museum of Natural History.  The visuals generated for this talk isolate scientifically rich data and stories, which can lead to scientific discovery and will illuminate Gaia data for students, teachers and the general public.

About the speaker

Jackie Faherty is Senior Scientist and Senior Education Manager jointly in the Department of Astrophysics and in the Department of Education at the American Museum of Natural History of New York, USA. 
Dissertation title: 'Visualizing a billion stars for science and education'.

Her Research interests: Brown Dwarfs, exoplanet atmospheres detection and characterization.
 www.jackiefaherty.com