Gaia Collaboration to Receive 2023 Berkeley Prize

The Gaia consortium receives the AAS Berkeley prize. The University of Geneva was a founding member of the consortium, and has been leading the variability analysis for these past 20 years, contributing also to the astrometric analysis of exoplanets.

Artist's view of the Gaia satellite in front of the Milky Way. © ESA

The Gaia collaboration is being honoured with the 2023 Berkeley prize for enabling a transformative, multidimensional map of the Milky Way. Since its launch in 2013, the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope has recorded stellar positions, distances, colours, and proper motions for nearly two billion stars in our Galaxy.

According to the prize statement, “Gaia’s three data releases will long be regarded as major events in the history of astronomy, triggering a global partnership to better understand the origin, structure, and destiny of our home galaxy.” See for more details:

https://aas.org/press/gaia-collaboration-to-receive-2023-berkeley-prize