Photometric Science Alerts from Gaia

Łukasz Wyrzykowski (1, 2) , Simon Hodgkin (2) , Nadejda Blogorodnova (2) , Sergey Koposov (2) , Ross Burgon (3)

1 Astronomical Observatory [Warsaw]
2 Institute of Astronomy [Cambridge]
3 School of Physical Sciences [Milton Keynes]

ESA's Gaia mission will be launched in late 2013 and will observe the entire sky for 5 years providing ultra-precise astrometric measurements (positions, parallaxes and proper motions) of a billion stars in the Galaxy. The astrometry will be derived from multiple observations of each source at different scanning angles. Hence, naturally, Gaia becomes an all-sky multi-epoch photometric survey, which will monitor and detect variability with millimag precision down to V = 15 mag and about 0.01 mag precision down to V = 20mag. Gaia will also be able to detect new objects appearing in its field-of-view thanks to the window allocation system in the first CCDs in the focal plane. This includes most classes of transient phenomena like supernovae, novae, microlensing events, asteroids, etc.

Domaines: Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]; Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]

Łukasz Wyrzykowski, Simon Hodgkin, Nadejda Blogorodnova, Sergey Koposov, Ross Burgon. Photometric Science Alerts from Gaia. GAIA-FUN-SSO 2012: Second "Gaia Follow-up Network for Solar System Objects", Workshop held at IMCCE / Paris Observatory, 2012, September 19 - 21, Sep 2012, Paris, France. pp. 21-26. ⟨hal-00836231⟩