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J.J. Binney (Oxford University)
In the five years from 2011 ESA's GAIA mission will conduct the first magnitude-limited astrometric survey of the whole sky. It will measure coordinates for about 109 stars to V~20. In the GAIA catalogue, stars brighter than V~15 will have parallaxes accurate to 10% out to distances R~10\,kpc. Stars brighter than V~17 will have radial velocities good to a few km\,s-1. An elaborate series of intermediate-band colours will be measured for all stars.
I will argue that to exploit this spectacular catalogue effectively, it will be necessary to construct around it a dynamical model of the Galaxy. The model will have to be constructed iteratively and exploit techniques from solar-system dynamics much more extensively than is usual in galactic astronomy. Thus the GAIA mission challenges us to break new ground in galactic dynamics.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 #4
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.