The second Gaia data release

Coryn Bailer-Jones

MPIA

On 25 April the Gaia Consortium will make its second data release based on 22 months of mission data. The release will contain five-parameter astrometry and three-band photometry for over 1 billion stars down to G=20.7, radial velocities for 7 million stars, variability classification for several hundred thousand stars, plus basic stellar parameters for up to 160 million stars. I will give an overview of the content, precision, and coverage of this release plus some tips on how (not) to use the data.