White dwarfs in Gaia

The Gaia satellite, placed in orbit it 2013, has been precisely measuring the positions of about 1 billion stars. In particular it measures the stellar parallax, the effect of stellar positions subtly changing as the satellite orbits the Sun (in tandem with the Earth). The stars nearest the Solar System have the largest parallaxes, and so this provides the most accurate way to measure distances to our nearest stellar neighbours. Thanks to Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) in April 2018, the parallaxes of one billion stars are now publically available, for which about 260000 are for white dwarfs. This has increased the number of known white dwarfs almost ten-fold, and allows us to learn about these objects in entirely new ways. One of our major new results, which would have previously been impossible, is the confirmation of crystallisation of the carbon+oxygen ions in white dwarf interiors (see select publications below). Thanks to Gaia, great strides are being made in many areas of astronomy, and so it is an exciting time to be studying white dwarfs.