GAIA, Binaries and Planets: From the detectors to some parameters relevant to astrophysics

Persons :

• Dr.  POURBAIX Dimitri - Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
  Coordinator of the project
  Financed belgian partner
  Duration: 1/12/2004-30/6/2008
  

Description :

The GAIA mission will observe about one billion objects in our Galaxy and beyond and will provide accurate positions, distances, proper motions and astrophysical parameters of all these objects. The data processing for this mission is the most challenging and demanding effort ever undertaken for a space mission (1 petabyte of data and 10**21 floating point operations needed).

The coordinator of this PRODEX project is the Chairman of Coordination Unit 4 ("Object Processing") of the GAIA Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC). DPAC prepares the architecture and the processing tools for the future data reduction of the GAIA observations. Coordination Unit 4 deals with the specific processing aspects required for binary stars and exoplanets.

The development of the data processing involves:

- Coordination Unit management.
- Development of a binary simulator.
- Imaging of visual and astrometric binary surroundings.
- Analysis of imaging of resolved binaries.
- Binary and exoplanet orbit reconstruction.
- Error analysis.

Satellite(s) or flight opportunity(ies):

- GAIA


Field of research:

Space Sciences: Binaries