Related papers: Gaia, counting down to launch
One of the most promising space missions of ESA is the astrometric satellite Gaia, which will provide very precise astrometry and multicolour photometry, for all 1.3 billion objects to V~20, and radial velocities with accuracies of a few…
In this contribution I provide a brief summary of the contents of Gaia DR1. This is followed by a discussion of studies in the literature that attempt to characterize the quality of the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution parallaxes in Gaia…
Context. This study has been developed in the framework of the computational simulations executed for the preparation of the ESA Gaia astrometric mission. Aims. We focus on describing the objects and characteristics that Gaia will…
The ESA Gaia mission uses two telescopes to create the most ambitious survey of the Galaxy. The angle between them must be known with exquisite precision and accuracy. An interferometer: the Basic Angle Monitoring system measures its…
The European Space Agency Gaia satellite was launched into orbit around L2 in December 2013. This ambitious mission has strict requirements on residual systematic errors resulting from instrumental corrections in order to meet a design goal…
Context. This paper presents an overview of the photometric data that are part of the first Gaia data release. Aims. The principles of the processing and the main characteristics of the Gaia photometric data are presented. Methods. The…
This paper discusses the scientific objectives for the ESA Lunar Lander Mission, which emphasise human exploration preparatory science and introduces the model scientific payload considered as part of the on-going mission studies, in…
The scientific output of the proposed EChO mission (in terms of spectroscopic characterization of the atmospheres of transiting extrasolar planets) will be maximized by a careful selection of targets and by a detailed characterization of…
The Gaia mission is reviewed together with the expected contents of the final catalogue. It is then argued that the ultimate goal of Galactic structure studies with Gaia astrometry should be to build a dynamical model of our galaxy which is…
The GAIA Observatory, ESA's Cornerstone 6 mission, addresses the origin and evolution of our Galaxy, and a host of other scientific challenges. GAIA will provide unprecedented positional and radial velocity measurements with the accuracies…
The standard errors of the end-of-mission Gaia astrometry have been re-assessed after conclusion of the in-orbit commissioning phase of the mission. An analytical relation is provided for the parallax standard error as function of Gaia G…
The final astrometric data from the Gaia mission will transform our view of the stellar content of the Galaxy, particularly when complemented with spectroscopic surveys providing stellar parameters, line-of-sight kinematics and elemental…
The first data release from the Gaia mission contains accurate positions and magnitudes for more than a billion sources, and proper motions and parallaxes for the majority of the 2.5~million Hipparcos and Tycho-2 stars. We describe three…
The ESAC Gaia team engages in a form of eXtreme programming while the DPAC will follow a series of six month development cycles modeled on this approach. As a project within the European Space Agency the European Committee for Space…
The era of high-precision astrometry has dawned upon us. The potential of Gaia $\mu$as-level precision in positional measurements is about to be unleashed in the field of extrasolar planetary systems. The Gaia data hold the promise for much…
Since July 2014, the ESA Gaia mission has been surveying the entire sky down to magnitude 20.7 in the visible. In addition to the millions of stars, thousands of Solar System Objects (SSOs) are observed daily. By comparing their positions…
Aims. The photometric validation of the Gaia DR1 release of the ESA Gaia mission is described and the quality of the data shown. Methods. This is carried out via an internal analysis of the photometry using the most constant sources.…
General importance and capabilities of observations of eclipsing binaries by the forthcoming ESA mission GAIA are discussed. Availability of spectroscopic observations and a large number of photometric bands on board will make it possible…
The measurement of the positions, distances, motions and luminosities of stars represents the foundations of modern astronomical knowledge. Launched at the end of the eighties, the ESA Hipparcos satellite was the first space mission…
The Gaia mission started its regular observing program in the summer of 2014, and since then it is regularly obtaining observations of asteroids. This paper draws the outline of the data processing for Solar System objects, and in…