Talk at NAS meeting on GAIA last night

[h0ughy]

Last night we had a Talk on GAIA by Estelle Asmodelle. Absolutely fantastic and she opened our eyes on what this astrometry telescope will provide for us in the future - simply amazing stuff. She was very informative and the talk certainly hit the mark.

some quick info gleaned from ESA : (http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=28820)

About Gaia
Gaia will create a three-dimensional map of the Milky Way, in the process revealing information about its composition, formation and evolution. The mission will perform positional measurements for about one billion stars in our Galaxy and Local Group with unprecedented precision, together with radial velocity measurements for the brightest 150 million objects. Gaia is scheduled to launch in 2013 for a nominal five-year mission, with a possible one-year extension.

The spacecraft will operate in a Lissajous orbit around the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system (L2). This location in space offers a very stable thermal environment, very high observing efficiency (since the Sun, Earth and Moon are all behind the instrument FoV) and a low radiation environment. Uninterrupted mapping of the sky will take place during the operational mission phase.

The Prime Contractor for Gaia is Astrium SAS, based in Toulouse, France. The contractor responsible for development and integration of the PAA is EADS CASA Espacio, based in Madrid, Spain.

[Dennis]

Thanks Dave. I understand that brilliant people like Tesla were able to visualise scientific experiments using mental imagery and didn’t have to rely on computers and displays to gain insight into problems they were pondering!

Although I suspect the number of imaginary discrete elements that they had to visualise and manipulate at any one time, were a little less than what Gaia is proposing. ;)

Cheers

Dennis

[glenc]

"The European Space Agency (http://www.theguardian.com/science/european-space-agency)'s Gaia spacecraft is poised to begin its mission to map a billion stars in our galaxy to an unprecedented level of detail, with its scheduled launch on Thursday...
The starry "census" will record many parameters including stars' distances from the Earth accurate to around 1%...
Gaia will record data for around 1% of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy..
...the Hipparcos catalogue (only) containing 118,218 stars."
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/13/gaia-spacecraft-set-launch-mission-3d-map-stars

[glenc]

The European Space Agency successfully put its Gaia satellite into orbit, with the hopes of unrolling a stunning map of the Milky Way in 3D.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57616086-1/billion-pixel-gaia-camera-to-map-galaxy-in-3d/

[multiweb]

This is going to be extremely interesting. Astrometry is such a cool science. With the computers we have now to visualise 3D volumes I'm looking forward to some pretty awesome maps. So I take it the next version of Celestia is coming soon? :)

[Nico13]

Yes Marc and Glen a 3D map is what I'll be wanting to see.
I think it was quoted as a five year program so no doubt it'll be drip fed to us for a start but the final product should be awsome with great new info. :thumbsup:

[glenc]

"The satellite has been given an initial mission duration of five years to make its 3D map of the sky.
By repeatedly viewing its targets, it should get to know the brightest stars' coordinates down to an error of just seven micro-arcseconds - an angle equivalent to a euro coin on the Moon being observed from Earth...
But Gaia's advanced optics will for the first time extend parallax to stars in the LMC."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26073173