Faster, Better, Cheaper: News on Seeking Gaia’s Astrometric Solution with AGIS

• Gaia is ESA’s ambitious space astrometry mission with a foreseen launch date in early 2012. Its main objective is to perform a stellar census of the 1000 Million brightest objects in our galaxy (completeness to V=20 mag) from which an astrometric catalog of micro-arcsec level accuracy will be constructed. A key element in this endeavor is the Astrometric Global Iterative Solution (AGIS) - the mathematical and numerical framework for combining the ≍80 available observations per star obtained during Gaia’s 5yr lifetime into a single global astrometric solution. At last year’s ADASS XVIII we presented (O4.1) in detail the fundamental working principles of AGIS, its development status, and selected results obtained by running the system on processing hardware at ESAC, Madrid with large-scale simulated data sets. We present here the latest developments around AGIS highlighting in particular a much improved algebraic solving method that has recently been implemented. This Conjugate Gradient scheme improves the convergence behavior in significant ways and leads to a solution of much higher scientific quality. We also report on a new collaboration aiming at processing the data from the future small Japanese astrometry mission Nano-Jasmine with AGIS.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Astronomi, astrofysik och kosmologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology (hsv//eng)

Publikations- och innehållstyp

kon (ämneskategori)

ref (ämneskategori)