IA/U.Lisboa Seminar - Gaia and the Solar System: an ongoing revolution - 7 fevereiro 2017

The ESA Gaia mission is performing since summer 2014 an all-sky survey of all sources brighter than V~20. Most of them are stars (more than one billion), but many Solar System object are also present: 350,000 asteroids, some TNOs, comets and planetary satellites. The main science driver of Gaia is provided by the unprecedented astrometric accuracy and the physical characterization by spectro-photometry for all sources. For the Solar System, these data represent the richest homogeneous survey available, providing access to an incredible variety of properties and potentially leading to major breakthroughs in asteroid science. Also, Gaia stellar astrometry in general is going to heavily impact ground-based observations, as a completely new calibration of the sky is accessible. Some simple exploitations of the first intermediate data release published in September 2016, already show the improvements brought to ground-based astrometry of asteroids, and the completely renewed role of stellar occultations, an impressive tool of exploration whose efficiency is being multiplied by a large factor.

 

Observatório Astronómico de Lisboa (Seminar room)

Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-018 Lisboa