WALTON , N. A.

Gaia is an ESA cornerstone mission set to revolutionise our understanding of the Milky Way. Gaia is scheduled for launch in 2013, and is designed to map over one billion stars with three instruments to collect astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic data on stars in the Milky Way and in galaxies belonging to the Local Group, distant...

Before the publication of the Gaia Catalogue, the contents of the first data release have undergone multiple dedicated validation tests. These tests aim at analysing in-depth the Catalogue content to detect anomalies, individual problems in specific objects or in overall statistical properties, either to filter them before the public release,...