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Register a new userScience performance of Gaia, ESAs space-astrometry mission
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Authors
J. H. J. de Bruijne
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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. Gaias 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 (muas) for stars brighter than 12th magnitude, 25 muas for stars at 15th magnitude, and 300 muas 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 at magnitude 17. Gaias primary science goal is to unravel the kinematical, dynamical, and chemical structure and evolution of the Milky Way. In addition, Gaias 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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The Gaia satellite is a high-precision astrometry, photometry and spectroscopic ESA cornerstone mission, currently scheduled for launch in 2012. Its primary science drivers are the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Gaia will achieve its unprecedented accuracy requirements with detailed calibration and correction for CCD radiation damage and CCD geometric distortion. In this paper, the third of the series, we present our 3D Silvaco ATLAS model of the Gaia e2v CCD91-72 pixel. We publish e2vs design model predictions for the capacities of one of Gaias pixel features, the supplementary buried channel (SBC), for the first time. Kohley et al. (2009) measured the SBC capacities of a Gaia CCD to be an order of magnitude smaller than e2vs design. We have found the SBC doping widths that yield these measured SBC capacities. The widths are systematically 2 {mu}m offset to the nominal widths. These offsets appear to be uncalibrated systematic offsets in e2v photolithography, which could either be due to systematic stitch alignment offsets or lateral ABD shield doping diffusion. The range of SBC capacities were used to derive the worst-case random stitch error between two pixel features within a stitch block to be pm 0.25 {mu}m, which cannot explain the systematic offsets. It is beyond the scope of our pixel model to provide the manufacturing reason for the range of SBC capacities, so it does not allow us to predict how representative the tested CCD is. This open question has implications for Gaias radiation damage and geometric calibration models.
The Gaia satellite is a high-precision astrometry, photometry and spectroscopic ESA cornerstone mission, currently scheduled for launch in 2012. Its primary science drivers are the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Gaia will achieve its unprecedented positional accuracy requirements with detailed calibration and correction for radiation damage. At L2, protons cause displacement damage in the silicon of CCDs. The resulting traps capture and emit electrons from passing charge packets in the CCD pixel, distorting the image PSF and biasing its centroid. Microscopic models of Gaias CCDs are being developed to simulate this effect. The key to calculating the probability of an electron being captured by a trap is the 3D electron density within each CCD pixel. However, this has not been physically modelled for the Gaia CCD pixels. In Seabroke, Holland & Cropper (2008), the first paper of this series, we motivated the need for such specialised 3D device modelling and outlined how its future results will fit into Gaias overall radiation calibration strategy. In this paper, the second of the series, we present our first results using Silvacos physics-based, engineering software: the ATLAS device simulation framework. Inputting a doping profile, pixel geometry and materials into ATLAS and comparing the results to other simulations reveals that ATLAS has a free parameter, fixed oxide charge, that needs to be calibrated. ATLAS is successfully benchmarked against other simulations and measurements of a test device, identifying how to use it to model Gaia pixels and highlighting the effect of different doping approximations.
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 magnitude (and V-I colour) which supersedes the pre-launch relation provided in de Bruijne (2012).
THESEUS, one of the two space mission concepts being studied by ESA as candidates for next M5 mission within its Comsic Vision programme, aims at fully exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) to solve key questions about the early Universe, as well as becoming a cornerstone of multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics. By investigating the first billion years of the Universe through high-redshift GRBs, THESEUS will shed light on the main open issues in modern cosmology, such as the population of primordial low mass and luminosity galaxies, sources and evolution of cosmic re-ionization, SFR and metallicity evolution up to the cosmic dawn and across Pop-III stars. At the same time, the mission will provide a substantial advancement of multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics by enabling the identification, accurate localisation and study of electromagnetic counterparts to sources of gravitational waves and neutrinos, which will be routinely detected in the late 20s and early 30s by the second and third generation Gravitational Wave (GW) interferometers and future neutrino detectors, as well as of all kinds of GRBs and most classes of other X/gamma-ray transient sources. In all these cases, THESEUS will provide great synergies with future large observing facilities in the multi-messenger domain. A Guest Observer programme, comprising Target of Opportunity (ToO) observations, will expand the science return of the mission, to include, e.g., solar system minor bodies, exoplanets, and AGN.
Gaia is a very ambitious mission of the European Space Agency. At the heart of Gaia lie the measurements of the positions, distances, space motions, brightnesses and astrophysical parameters of stars, which represent fundamental pillars of modern astronomical knowledge. We provide a brief description of the Gaia mission with an emphasis on binary stars. In particular, we summarize results of simulations, which estimate the number of binary stars to be processed to several tens of millions. We also report on the catalogue release scenarios. In the current proposal, the first results for binary stars will be available in 2017 (for a launch in 2013).
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