VST snaps Gaia en route to a billion stars

Eso_potw1407a_1024

eso_potw1407a February 17th, 2014

Credit: ESO

These new images from ESO's Very Large Telescope Survey Telescope (VST) show ESA's Gaia spacecraft in its position some 1.5 million kilometres beyond Earth's orbit. Launched on the morning of Thursday, 19 December 2013, the satellite is on a quest to build a 3D map of our galaxy over the next five years. Mapping the sky has been one of humanity's quests since the dawn of time, and Gaia will take our understanding of our stellar neighbourhood to a whole new level. It will measure very precisely the positions and motions of about one billion stars in our galaxy, to explore the Milky Way's composition, formation and evolution. These new observations are the result of a close collaboration between ESA and ESO to monitor the spacecraft from the ground. Gaia is the most accurate astrometric device ever built, but in order for its observations to be useful it needs to know exactly where it is in the Universe. The only way to know the velocity and position of the spacecraft with very high precision is to observe it on a daily basis from the ground — using telescopes including ESO's VST in a campaign known as Ground-Based Optical Tracking, or GBOT. The VST is a state-of-the-art 2.6-metre telescope equipped with OmegaCAM, a monster 268-megapixel CCD camera with a field of view four times the area of the full Moon. The VST captured these images using OmegaCAM on 23 January 2014, taken about 6.5 minutes apart. Gaia is clearly visible as a small spot moving against a background of stars. Its location is circled in red. In these images, the spacecraft is about a million times fainter than is detectable by the naked eye. Gaia was previously observed in December 2013 by the VST, very soon after its launch — it is one of the closest objects ever observed by the VST. It appeared in precisely the location expected, highlighting a successful collaboration between ground- and space-based astronomy! Links ESA's Gaia minisite ESA's Gaia blog

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1407a/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Gaia
Subject - General
Technology > Spacecraft

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
VST (OmegaCAM) -
Eso_potw1407a_1280
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ID
potw1407a
Subject Category
E.8.2  
Subject Name
Gaia
Credits
ESO
Release Date
2014-02-17T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1407a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
VLT Survey Telescope
Instrument
OmegaCAM
Color Assignment
Band
Bandpass
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
1880.0, 1019.0
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
European Southern Observatory
URL
http://www.eso.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
European Southern Observatory
Publisher ID
eso
Resource ID
potw1407a
Metadata Date
2023-10-11T09:22:59.329020
Metadata Version
1.1
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