A new asteroid taxonomy will be an important result of Gaia observations of Solar System objects. Since Gaia observes asteroids in observing conditions and in an interval of wavelength which are slightly different with respect to normal ground-based observations, a dedicated observing campaign has been carried out at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain). The obtained spectra have been used to generate a large number of synthetic clones, each one having slight changes with respect to its parent spectrum. These synthetic spectra are then used to feed the algorithm of taxonomic classification developed to reduce Gaia asteroid spectra. Processing of these data is in progress.

Accurate positional measurements of planets and satellites are used to improve our knowledge of their orbits and dynamics, and to infer the accuracy of the planet and satellite ephemerides. With the arrival of the Gaia-DR1 reference star catalog and its complete release afterward, the methods for ground-based astrometry become outdated in terms of their formal accuracy compared to the catalog's which is used. Systematic and zonal errors of the reference stars are eliminated, and the astrometric process now dominates in the error budget.

We present a set of algorithms for computing the apparent directions of planets, satellites and stars on any date to micro-arcsecond precision. The expressions are consistent with the ICRS reference system, and define the transformation between theoretical reference data, and ground-based astrometric observables.

Using the spectroscopic distances of over 0.12 million A-type stars selected from the LAMOST Spectroscopic Survey of the Galactic Anti-center (LSS-GAC), we map their three-dimensional number density distributions in the Galaxy. These stellar number density maps allow an investigation of the Galactic young age thin disk structure with no a priori assumptions about the functional form of its components. The data show strong evidence for a significant flaring young disk. A more detail analysis show that the stellar flaring have different behaviours between the Northern and the Southern Galactic disks. The maps also reveal spatially coherent, kpc-scale stellar substructure in the thin disk. Finally, we detect the Perseus arm stellar overdensity at R ~ 10 kpc.

The Gaia-ESO Survey (GES, Gilmore et al. 2012) provides a unique opportunity to detect spectroscopically multiplicity among different populations of the Galaxy using the cross-correlation functions (CCFs). We present here the GES internal Data Release 4 (iDR4) results of the detection of double, triple and quadruple-line spectroscopic binary candidates (SBs) and discuss some peculiar systems.

Current Galactic surveys, including the Gaia mission, rely on the efficiency of the spectral analysis techniques to provide precise and accurate spectral information (i.e. effective temperature, surface gravity, metallicity, and chemical abundances) in the shortest computational time. In this work, we present a new package to preform complete spectral analyses based on the spectral synthesis technique (Tsantaki et al. 2017, submitted). We focus on deriving atmospheric parameters for FGK-type stars using both high and medium resolution (GIRAFFE) spectra. This method is implemented on the Gaia-ESO benchmark stars to confirm its validity, achieving similar accuracy for the two resolution setups.

The Gaia astrometric reference catalogue will provide star proper motions with an accuracy of one mas one century ago for stars of magnitude 14 or brighter. Our project is to re-reduced the old observations with the new catalogue allowing to have an astrometric accuracy only limited by the observational biases and not by reference stars. Then, we plan to get an accuracy of 50 mas where the old reductions were not better than 500 mas!

For our purpose, we will digitize old photographic plates with a sub-micrometric scanner. Tests were made using the UCAC catalogue showing that old photographic plates have an intrinsect accuracy of 30 to 60 mas.

The Gaia first data release (DR1) already provides an almost error free optical reference frame on the milli-arcsecond (mas) level allowing significantly better calibration of ground-based astrometric data than ever before. Gaia DR1 provides positions, proper motions and trigonometric parallaxes for just over 2 million stars in the Tycho-2 catalog. For over 1.1 billion additional stars DR1 gives positions. Proper motions for these, mainly fainter stars (G ≥ 11.5) are currently provided by several new projects which combine earlier epoch ground-based observations with Gaia DR1 positions. These data are very helpful in the interim period but will become obsolete with the second Gaia data release (DR2) expected in April 2018. The era of traditional, ground-based, wide-field astrometry with the goal to provide accurate reference stars has come to an end. Future ground-based astrometry will fill in some gaps (very bright stars, observations needed at many or specific epochs) and mainly will go fainter than the Gaia limit, like the PanSTARRS and the upcoming LSST surveys.

The final astrometric data from the Gaia mission will transform our view of the stellar content of the Galaxy, particularly when complemented with spectroscopic surveys providing stellar parameters, line-of-sight kinematics and elemental abundances. Analyses with Gaia DR1 are already demonstrating the insight gained and the promise of what is to come with future Gaia releases. I present a brief overview of results and puzzles from recent Galactic Archaeology surveys for context, focusing on the Galactic discs.

Our goal is to understand the evolution and properties of gaps produced by dark matter subhalos in stellar tidal streams. Here we explore how gaps grow in spherical potentials in comparison to axisymmetric potentials. We develop a model that uses the divergence of two orbits, one on each side of the gap, to describe the size of the gap and how this varies with time and depends on the characteristics of the encounter with the dark subhalo. To this end we use a formalism based on action-angle variables.

The stellar occultation technique is a powerful tool to study distant small solar system bodies. Currently, around 2 500 trans-neptunian objects (TNOs) and Centaurs are known. With the astrometry from Gaia and large surveys like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), accurate predictions of occultation events will be available to tens of thousands of TNOs and Centaurs and boost the knowledge of the outer solar system.

755 CCD observations during the years 2014-2016 have been reduced to derive the precise positions of Triton, the first satellite of Neptune. The observations were made by the 1 m telescope at Yunnan Observatory over 15 nights during the years 2014-2016. The theoretical position of Triton was retrieved from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Horizons system. Our results show that when the newest Gaia catalogue (Gaia DR1) is referred to the mean O-Cs (observed minus computed) residuals are about 0.042 and -0.006 arcsec, the dispersions are 0.012 and 0.012 arcsec in right ascension and declination, respectively. The dispersions are improved very significantly when the Gaia DR1 is referred to. However, the agreement in right ascension is not so good as that in declination, the reason might come from the uncertainty of planet ephemeris. More observations are needed to confirm this.

Some studies suggested that the chemical abundance trend with the condensation temperature, T c, is a signature of rocky planet formation. Very recently, a strong T c trend was reported in ζ2 Ret relative to its companion (ζ1 Ret) and was explained by the presence of a debris disk around ζ2 Ret. We re-evaluated the presence and variability of the T c trend in this system with a goal to understand the impact of the presence of the debris disk on a star. Our results confirm the reported abundance difference between ζ2 Ret and ζ1 Ret and its dependence on the T c. However, we also found that the T c trends depend on the individual spectrum used. We conclude that for the ζ Reticuli system, for example, nonphysical factors can be at the root of the T c trends for the case of individual spectra. For more details see Adibekyan et al. (2016b).

The middle B to the early F Main Sequence stars have some of the most quiet stellar atmospheres. In this part of the HR diagram we find stars with atmospheres in radiative equilibrium. They lack the convective circulations of the middle F and cooler stars and the massive stellar winds of hotter stars. When stars of different mass evolve off the Main Sequence in this part of the HR Diagram their evolutionary paths do not cross initially. Thus stars with the same effective temperature and surface gravity have the same luminosity and mass. By comparing their elemental abundances, we might be able to identify physical processes which cause any differences in their abundances. Here we begin with stars whose effective temperatures and surface gravities are similar, and which have been analyzed by us using spectra obtained from the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO). Improvements in our knowledge of the energy distributions of stars (for example via GAIA measurements) should lead to improved estimates of stellar effective temperatures and surface gravities.

Since September 2016, the first release (DR1) of the Gaia catalogue was appeared. The optical Gaia positions of sources will be linked to the ICRF (VLBI radio positions of mostly quasars, QSOs). For high accurate link we need to investigate variations of optical flux of QSOs via their magnitude variations using data of ground-based telescopes. To do that, from 2013 we observed 47 QSOs and other sources; nine optical telescopes were used for that monitoring. To increase the total number of objects for the link, after a first set of 70 objects (Bourda et al. 2008), Bourda et al. (2011) established a second set of 47 objects. It is necessary to investigate the photometry and morphology of these objects. We collected ground-based data of QSOs (B, V and R mag) and compared with G mag of Gaia DR1; some results are presented here.

We are presenting the first results of low dispersion spectroscopic observation of asteroids at Bulgarian National Astronomical Observatory Rozhen. Asteroids with unclassified spectra and brighter than 15 magnitude have been chosen. Besides just presenting the asteroid reflectance, classification according to Bus S. J. et al. (2012) has been done. The asteroid spectra of 590 Tomyris, 703 Noemi, 1596 Itzigsohn and 1826 Miller are presented together with standard spectra corresponding to the three best matches given by the public software tool M4AST (Popescu M. et al. (2012)). Our aim is to participate in the coordinated program of asteroids spectroscopy complementary to the observations of Gaia.

We combined the data from the Gaia DR1 and Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) catalogues in order to derive the absolute proper motions more than 420 million stars distributed all over the sky in the stellar magnitude range 8 mag < G < 21 mag (Gaia magnitude). To eliminate the systematic zonal errors in position of 2MASS catalogue objects, the 2-dimensional median filter was used. The PMA system of proper motion has been obtained by direct link to 1.6 millions extragalactic sources. The short analysis of the absolute proper motion of the PMA stars Catalogue is presented in this work. From a comparison of this data with same stars from the TGAS, UCAC4 and PPMXL catalogues, the equatorial components of the mutual rotation vector of these coordinate systems are determined.

We present the modeling tool we developed to incorporate multi-technique observations of Cepheids in a single pulsation model: the Spectro-Photo-Interferometry of Pulsating Stars (SPIPS). The combination of angular diameters from optical interferometry, radial velocities and photometry with the coming Gaia DR2 parallaxes of nearby Galactic Cepheids will soon enable us to calibrate the projection factor of the classical Parallax-of-Pulsation method. This will extend its applicability to Cepheids too distant for accurate Gaia parallax measurements, and allow us to precisely calibrate the Leavitt law's zero point. As an example application, we present the SPIPS model of the long-period Cepheid RS Pup that provides a measurement of its projection factor, using the independent distance estimated from its light echoes.

We have developed a fully automated cluster characterization pipeline, which simultaneously determines cluster membership and fits the fundamental cluster parameters: distance, reddening, and age. We present results for 24 established clusters and compare them to literature values. Given the large amount of stellar data for clusters available from Gaia DR2 in 2018, this pipeline will be beneficial to analyzing the parameters of open clusters in our Galaxy.

The LAMOST Galactic surveys provide robust stellar atmospheric parameters, abundances, masses and ages of millions of stars, allowing a unprecedented mapping of matter distribution, spatial structure, star formation rate, chemistry and kinematics of the Galaxy. In this proceeding we present structure and metallicity of the Galactic disk revealed by mono-age stellar populations within a few kilo-parsec of the solar neighborhood.

Galaxy models are fundamental to exploiting surveys of our Galaxy. There is now a significant body of work on axisymmetric models. A model can be defined by giving the DF of each major class of stars and of dark matter. Then the self-consistent gravitational potential is determined. Other modelling techniques are briefly considered before an overview of some early work on non-axisymmetric models.