Gaia is a European Space Agency mission is to reveal the composition, formation and evolution of our Milky Way Galaxy. The whole mission cost around 1 billion Euros, the Gaia satellite (launched in 2013) has the largest CCD camera in space with nearly 1 billion pixels and it is observing over 1 billion stars (1% of the Galaxy's population).

The revolution began with Gaia’s first data release (DR1) in 2016, which included the positions of over 1 billion stars, allowing the most detailed map ever of the night sky to be made. The revolution will continue with Gaia’s second data release (DR2, April 2018). DR2 will improve this map and extend it to 3D by publishing the parallaxes of these 1 billion stars, from which their distances can be inferred. It will be possible to turn this 3D map into a movie because DR2 will also include how stars move with time (proper motions and radial velocities).

Not only will Gaia revolutionise most of astrophysics because distances are so fundamental to the subject, it will also discover thousands of supernovae, tens of thousands of new planetary systems around other stars, monitor hundreds of millions of variable stars, study 500,000 quasars across the Universe, measure how space-time is warped by the gravitational fields of the Sun and major planets and provide our first census of asteroids in the inner Solar System!

I will present the scientific motivation for Gaia, the satellite itself and its measurement principles, the human side of Gaia, the contents of DR1 and highlights of its scientific results, the promise of DR2, MSSL’s contribution to the mission, how anyone can get involved with the mission now (Gaia Alerts) and the future of the mission.

While it is more than 150 years since the first known white dwarf, Sirius B, was discovered, these stars remain enigmatic objects. They are implicated in Type Ia supernova explosions and the population can be used to place limits on the age of the Galaxy. In recent years new surprises have emerged, suggesting that white dwarfs are accreting the remnants of their ancient planetary systems. These stars might also be used to probe the fundamental physics of the cosmos. This talk will discuss the history of the the discovery of white dwarfs leading to these latest discoveries.

The New Horizon spacecraft flew-by Pluto in July of 2015, observing Pluto and its five moons using a suite of instruments that included two cameras, an ultra-violet and an infrared spectrometer. This talk will give an overview of New Horizons' exciting results, and describe what the post-Pluto future holds for this important mission.

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Carlos Frenk is helping to answer some of the most basic — yet profound — questions about our Universe and its origins. These relate to what it is made of, how matter and energy were organised in the early stages of the Big Bang, and how structure subsequently evolved into the pattern of galaxies that we see today.

Using incredibly powerful supercomputers, he builds and runs simulations of the cosmos. The results can then be compared with observations of the real Universe to test theories about its formation, structure and evolution. His techniques are now commonly used within the field of cosmology to explain how the stars and galaxies arose.

Up to 85 per cent of the mass of the Universe is thought to consist of dark matter — mysterious matter that barely interacts with electromagnetic radiation such as light. Carlos and collaborators also pioneered the theory of cold dark matter, a now widely accepted model for the formation of larger cosmic objects through the aggregation and merging of smaller, collapsed, objects.

Twinkle is a small, low-cost mission that will use spectroscopy to decode the light from hundreds of extrasolar planets. Twinkle will be able to reveal, for the first time, the chemical composition, weather and history of worlds orbiting distant stars. The Twinkle satellite will be built in the UK and launched into a low-Earth orbit within 3 to 4 years, using a platform designed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and instrumentation led by UCL. This project also is allowing for collaboration between amateurs and professionals in gathering data for candidate stellar systems. Dr Tessenyi will be updating us with the latest developments in this exciting program.