Abstract

Contributed Talk - Plenary

Gaia’s Farewell and the Rise of Astrometric Microlensing

Mauritz Wicker
University of Warsaw

The Gaia space mission has revolutionized our understanding of the Milky Way through its unprecedented astrometric and photometric measurements of over a billion stars. With the mission recently concluded and anticipation building for the upcoming Data Release 4 (DR4), new opportunities are emerging for time-domain astronomy. In this talk, I will discuss the Gaia spacecraft, the mission itself, and highlight the unique data products expected in DR4. I will also explore how Gaia enables both photometric and astrometric microlensing, powerful techniques for detecting and characterizing dark and compact objects such as stellar-mass black holes. Finally, I will present recent developments in my own research, which combines Gaia data with ground-based follow-up observations to identify and model microlensing events.