GAIA’S “LIVING AND BREATHING” MILKY WAY

Alejandra Recio-Blanco –  Lagrange (OCA), Nice

The European Space Agency Gaia mission has transformed our understanding of the Milky Way. It has allowed us to see the Galaxy as a heterogeneous and evolving system, in permanent interaction with its environment. In June 2022, the Gaia Data Release 3, completing the previous EDR3, made possible the 3D kinematical and dynamical analysis of 33 million stars in the Milky Way and its satellites. In addition, it has opened a new era of all-sky chemo-physical analysis of stellar populations thanks to the nearly 5.6 million stars observed by the Radial Velocity Spectrometer and parameterized by the GSP-Spec module. This all-sky Gaia chemo-dynamical cartography allows a powerful and precise view of the Milky Way with unprecedented spatial coverage and statistical robustness. In this talk, I will first present the Gaia observational context. In addition, I will review recent chemo-dynamical indications of Milky Way’s nature and nurture evolution, illustrating the Galaxy’s interaction with its environment, but also the influence of its secular internal evolution.