Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009iau...261.1601l&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, IAU Symposium #261. Relativity in Fundamental Astronomy: Dynamics, Reference Frames, and Data Ana
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The ESA Gaia mission is an all-sky astrometric and spectrophotometric survey of all point-like objects between 6th and 20th magnitude. Some 1 billion stars, a few million galaxies, half a million quasars, and a few hundred thousand asteroids will be observed over 5-6 years with typically 80 field-of-view transits per object. Expected accuracies for stellar parallaxes, annual proper motions and mean epoch positions are 7-25 microarcsec down to 15th magnitude and 100-300 microarcsec at 20th magnitude. The astrometric data are complemented by low-resolution spectrophotometric data in the 330-1000 nm wavelength range and, for the brighter stars, radial velocity measurements. The primary scientific objective of Gaia is to study galactic structure and evolution by correlating the spatial distributions and kinematics of stars with their astrophysical properties. However, a much wider range of topics in stellar astrophysics, solar system and exoplanet science, cosmology and fundamental physics will benefit from the mission data. A very accurate, dense and faint non-rotating optical reference frame will be established through direct observations of quasars. The project is in its advanced implementation phase, on schedule for a targeted launch in late 2011. Critical payload elements such as SiC telescope mirrors and optical bench, CCDs and electronic units, have been or are in the process of being manufactured. In parallel, preparations for the scientific data processing are well under way within the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. Final mission results are expected around 2021, but early releases of preliminary data are expected. This review summarizes the main science goals and overall organisation of the project, then focuses on the expected performance and certain key issues of the measurement principle and its technical implementation.
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