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Science performance of Gaia, ESA’s space-astrometry mission

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Abstract

Gaia is the next astrometry mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), following up on the success of the Hipparcos mission. With a focal plane containing 106 CCD detectors, Gaia will survey the entire sky and repeatedly observe the brightest 1,000 million objects, down to 20th magnitude, during its 5-year lifetime. Gaia’s science data comprises absolute astrometry, broad-band photometry, and low-resolution spectro-photometry. Spectroscopic data with a resolving power of 11,500 will be obtained for the brightest 150 million sources, down to 17th magnitude. The thermo-mechanical stability of the spacecraft, combined with the selection of the L2 Lissajous point of the Sun-Earth/Moon system for operations, allows stellar parallaxes to be measured with standard errors less than 10 micro-arcsecond (μas) for stars brighter than 12th magnitude, 25 μas for stars at 15th magnitude, and 300 μas at magnitude 20. Photometric standard errors are in the milli-magnitude regime. The spectroscopic data allows the measurement of radial velocities with errors of 15 km s−1 at magnitude 17. Gaia’s primary science goal is to unravel the kinematical, dynamical, and chemical structure and evolution of the Milky Way. In addition, Gaia’s data will touch many other areas of science, e.g., stellar physics, solar-system bodies, fundamental physics, and exo-planets. The Gaia spacecraft is currently in the qualification and production phase. With a launch in 2013, the final catalogue is expected in 2021. The science community in Europe, organised in the Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC), is responsible for the processing of the data.

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Article Open access 26 March 2021

Notes

  1. Although the optical design is exclusively based on mirrors, diffraction effects with residual aberrations induce systematic chromatic shifts of the diffraction images, and thus of the measured star positions. These chromatic displacements, usually neglected in optical systems, are significant for Gaia and will be calibrated as part of the on-ground data analysis using the colour information provided by the photometry of each observed object.

  2. This range has been carefully selected to coincide with the energy-distribution peaks of G- and K-type giants, which are the most abundant RVS targets. For these late-type stars, the RVS wavelength range contains, besides numerous weak lines mainly due to Fe, Si, and Mg, three strong ionised-calcium lines. The absorption lines in this triplet allow radial velocities to be derived, even at modest signal-to-noise ratios. In early-type stars, RVS spectra contain weak lines such as Ca II, He I, He II, and N I, although they are dominated by hydrogen-Paschen lines.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is partially based on information provided on ESA’s Science-and-Technology and Research-and-Scientific-Support-Department web pages, http://sci.esa.int/gaia and http://www.rssd.esa.int/gaia.

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  1. European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Research and Scientific Support Department (SRE-SA), European Space Agency (ESA), P.O. Box 299, 2200 AG, Noordwijk, The Netherlands

    J. H. J. de Bruijne

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Correspondence to J. H. J. de Bruijne.

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de Bruijne, J.H.J. Science performance of Gaia, ESA’s space-astrometry mission. Astrophys Space Sci 341, 31–41 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-012-1019-4

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