RR Lyrae stars in the Gaia era

Abstract

Gaia, the European Space Agency spacecraft successfully launched on 19 December 2013, entered into nominal science operations on 18 July 2014 after a few months of commissioning, and has been scanning the sky to a faint limit of G = 20.7 mag since then. Gaia is expected to observe more than a hundred thousand RR Lyrae stars in the Galactic halo and bulge (most of which will be new discoveries), and to provide parallax measurements with about 10 {\mu}as uncertainty for those brighter than <V>$\sim$ 12-13 mag. Status and activities of the spacecraft since launch are briefly reviewed with emphasis on preliminary results obtained for RR Lyrae stars observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud during the first 28 days of science operations spent in Ecliptic Pole scanning mode and in light of the first Gaia data release which is scheduled for summer 2016.