Dynamical models of our Galaxy in the age of Gaia

by Dr Giacomo Monari (Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg)

Friday 10 Feb 2017, 10:30 → 11:30 Europe/Stockholm

FC61

I will discuss our knowledge of the distribution and kinematics of stars in the Milky Way, and how we can obtain simple and meaningful models from it. After a short review on the results of past surveys of the stellar content of the Milky Way, I will introduce the astrometric satellite Gaia and other large surveys that will try to answer fundamental questions on the structure, dynamics, and formation of the Galaxy in the near future. I will then discuss a technique to model the Milky Way based on action/angle variables, and how this can be extended to take in account the effects of bar and spiral arms on the stars of the Galactic disc. I will present a recent application of these models to the first data release of Gaia, which allowed for a new constrain of the Galactic bar’s pattern speed. I will conclude describing some near future application of these models, and in particular an attempt of measuring the local dark matter density using Gaia data.