Context. We present the second Gaia data release, Gaia DR2, consisting of astrometry, photometry, radial velocities, and information on astrophysical parameters and variability, for sources brighter than magnitude 21. In addition epoch astrometry and photometry are provided for a modest sample of minor planets in the solar system. Aims. A summary of the contents of Gaia DR2 is presented, accompanied by a discussion on the differences with respect to Gaia DR1 and an overview of the main limitations which are still present in the survey. Recommendations are made on the responsible use of Gaia DR2 results. Methods. The raw data collected with the Gaia instruments during the first 22 months of the mission have been processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) and turned into this second data release, which represents a major advance with respect to Gaia DR1 in terms of completeness, performance, and richness of the data products. Results. Gaia DR2 contains celestial positions and the apparent brightness in G for approximately 1.7 billion sources. For 1.3 billion of those sources, parallaxes and proper motions are in addition available. The sample of sources for which variability information is provided is expanded to 0.5 million stars. This data release contains four new elements: broad-band colour information in the form of the apparent brightness in the GBP (330–680 nm) and GRP (630–1050 nm) bands is available for 1.4 billion sources; median radial velocities for some 7 million sources are presented; for between 77 and 161 million sources estimates are provided of the stellar effective temperature, extinction, reddening, and radius and luminosity; and for a pre-selected list of 14 000 minor planets in the solar system epoch astrometry and photometry are presented. Finally, Gaia DR2 also represents a new materialisation of the celestial reference frame in the optical, the Gaia-CRF2, which is the first optical reference frame based solely on extragalactic sources. There are notable changes in the photometric system and the catalogue source list with respect to Gaia DR1, and we stress the need to consider the two data releases as independent. Conclusions. Gaia DR2 represents a major achievement for the Gaia mission, delivering on the long standing promise to provide parallaxes and proper motions for over 1 billion stars, and representing a first step in the availability of complementary radial velocity and source astrophysical information for a sample of stars in the Gaia survey which covers a very substantial fraction of the volume of our galaxy.

Gaia is a cornerstone mission in the science programme of the European Space Agency (ESA). The spacecraft construction was approved in 2006, following a study in which the original interferometric concept was changed to a direct-imaging approach. Both the spacecraft and the payload were built by European industry. The involvement of the scientific community focusses on data processing for which the international Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) was selected in 2007. Gaia was launched on 19 December 2013 and arrived at its operating point, the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth-Moon system, a few weeks later. The commissioning of the spacecraft and payload was completed on 19 July 2014. The nominal five-year mission started with four weeks of special, ecliptic-pole scanning and subsequently transferred into full-sky scanning mode. We recall the scientific goals of Gaia and give a description of the as-built spacecraft that is currently (mid-2016) being operated to achieve these goals. We pay special attention to the payload module, the performance of which is closely related to the scientific performance of the mission. We provide a summary of the commissioning activities and findings, followed by a description of the routine operational mode. We summarise scientific performance estimates on the basis of in-orbit operations. Several intermediate Gaia data releases are planned and the data can be retrieved from the Gaia Archive, which is available through the Gaia home page.

Red giants are evolved stars that have exhausted the supply of hydrogen in their cores and instead burn hydrogen in a surrounding shell 1,2 . Once a red giant is sufficiently evolved, the helium in the core also undergoes fusion 3 . Outstanding issues in our understanding of red giants include uncertainties in the amount of mass lost at the surface before helium ignition and the amount of internal mixing from rotation and other processes 4 . Progress is hampered by our inability to distinguish between red giants burning helium in the core and those still only burning hydrogen in a shell. Asteroseismology offers a way forward, being a powerful tool for probing the internal structures of stars using their natural oscillation frequencies 5 . Here we report observations of gravity-mode period spacings in red giants 6 that permit a distinction between evolutionary stages to be made. We use high-precision photometry obtained by the Kepler spacecraft over more than a year to measure oscillations in several hundred red giants. We find many stars whose dipole modes show sequences with approximately regular period spacings. These stars fall into two clear groups, allowing us to distinguish unambiguously between hydrogen-shell-burning stars (period spacing mostly 50 seconds) and those that are also burning helium (period spacing 100 to 300 seconds).Oscillations in red giants, like those in the Sun, are thought to be excited by near-surface convection. The observed oscillation spectra are indeed remarkably Sun-like, with a broad range of radial and nonradial modes in a characteristic comb pattern [7][8][9][10][11]

Context. The space mission Kepler provides us with long and uninterrupted photometric time series of red giants. We are now able to probe the rotational behaviour in their deep interiors using the observations of mixed modes. Aims. We aim to measure the rotational splittings in red giants and to derive scaling relations for rotation related to seismic and fundamental stellar parameters. Methods. We have developed a dedicated method for automated measurements of the rotational splittings in a large number of red giants. Ensemble asteroseismology, namely the examination of a large number of red giants at different stages of their evolution, allows us to derive global information on stellar evolution. Results. We have measured rotational splittings in a sample of about 300 red giants. We have also shown that these splittings are dominated by the core rotation. Under the assumption that a linear analysis can provide the rotational splitting, we observe a small increase of the core rotation of stars ascending the red giant branch. Alternatively, an important slow down is observed for red-clump stars compared to the red giant branch. We also show that, at fixed stellar radius, the specific angular momentum increases with increasing stellar mass. Conclusions. Ensemble asteroseismology indicates what has been indirectly suspected for a while: our interpretation of the observed rotational splittings leads to the conclusion that the mean core rotation significantly slows down during the red giant phase. The slowdown occurs in the last stages of the red giant branch. This spinning down explains, for instance, the long rotation periods measured in white dwarfs.

When the core hydrogen is exhausted during stellar evolution, the central region of a star contracts and the outer envelope expands and cools, giving rise to a red giant. Convection takes place over much of the star's radius. Conservation of angular momentum requires that the cores of these stars rotate faster than their envelopes; indirect evidence supports this 1,2 . Information about the angular-momentum distribution is inaccessible to direct observations, but it can be extracted from the effect of rotation on oscillation modes that probe the stellar interior. Here we report an increasing rotation rate from the surface of the star to the stellar core in the interiors of red giants, obtained using the rotational frequency splitting of recently detected 'mixed modes' 3,4 . By comparison with theoretical stellar models, we conclude that the core must rotate at least ten times faster than the surface. This observational result confirms the theoretical prediction of a steep gradient in the rotation profile towards the deep stellar interior 1,5,6 .The asteroseismic approach to studying stellar interiors exploits information from oscillation modes of different radial order n and angular degree l, which propagate in cavities extending at different depths 7 . Stellar rotation lifts the degeneracy of non-radial modes, producing a multiplet of (2l 1 1) frequency peaks in the power spectrum for each mode. The frequency separation between two mode components of a multiplet is related to the angular velocity and to the properties of the mode in its propagation region. More information on the exploitation of rotational splitting of modes may be found in the Supplementary Information. An important new tool comes from mixed modes that were recently identified in red giants 3,4 . Stochastically excited solar-like oscillations in evolved G and K giant stars 8 have been well studied in terms of theory [9][10][11][12] , and the main results are consistent with recent observations from space-based photometry 13,14 . Whereas pressure modes are completely trapped in the outer acoustic cavity, mixed modes also probe the central regions and carry additional information from the core region, which is probed by gravity modes. Mixed dipole modes (l 5 1) appear in the Fourier power spectrum as dense clusters of modes around those that are best trapped in the acoustic cavity. These clusters, the components of which contain varying amounts of influence from pressure and gravity modes, are referred to as 'dipole forests'.We present the Fourier spectra of the brightness variations of stars KIC 8366239 (Fig. 1a), KIC 5356201 ( Supplementary Fig. 3a) and KIC 12008916 ( Supplementary Fig. 5a), derived from observations with the Kepler spacecraft. The three spectra show split modes, the spherical degree of which we identify as l 5 1. These detected multiplets cannot have been caused by finite mode lifetime effects from mode damping, because that would not lead to a consistent multiplet appearance over several orders such as that shown in Fig. 1. ...