Ground based follow-up for Gaia Science Alerts: First results

¹ Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
² INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, 40127 Bologna, Italy
³ CBA (Huelva), Observatorio del CIECEM, Matalascanas, 21076 Almonte, Huelva, Spain
⁴ Departamento de Física Aplicada, Universidad de Huelva, 21071 Huelva, Spain
⁵ SRON, Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Sorbonnelaan 2, 3584 CA, Utrecht, The Netherlands
⁶ Dept. of Astrophysics, IMAPP, Radboud University Nijmegen, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
⁷ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
⁸ Warsaw University Observatory, Al. Ujazdowskie 4, 00-478 Warszawa, Poland
⁹ Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands
¹⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

Abstract

The Gaia Science Alerts project (GSA) aims to augment a precision survey of the Milky Way with a controlled, precision survey of all classes of transient phenomena. While onboard BP/RP spectra from Gaia will ultimately allow us to classify many Gaia Alerts based on Gaia data alone, in the initial phases of the GSA project it is necessary to verify and classify discoveries with ground-based spectroscopic followup. In this article, we describe a subset of the ongoing Gaia Alerts followup programmes, and some of the initial science results from this work.