Mercè and Laia

Mercè Romero is an astronomer and works at the Gaia Group of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences. Laia Pons loves to dance and paint, but she has not decided yet what she wants to be in the future. Mercè is Laia’s mum, and explains to her what she does daily at the University of Barcelona, where she studies our galaxy’s kinematics and structure, using the Gaia data. She also makes predictions with galactic models.

Mercè is one of the Gaia’s team members at the University of Barcelona. Thirty scientists and engineers form the team, who has contributed to the origins and development of the Gaia Mission since the beginning. The group has a major role in the development of the simulations and the initial processing and photometric data from the mission. They also contribute to the software development, data management and its monitoring and scientific validation. The Gaia Mission is an ambitious mission by the European Space Agency, aimed to chart a three-dimensional map of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, and in the process revealing the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy. It was send to space in 2013, and since then it has produce a detailed map of our galaxy and two data catalogues that several teams all over the world use in their research.