Gaia Data Release 2 Hambly, N. C.; Cropper, M.; Boudreault, S. ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
08/2018, Letnik:
616
Journal Article
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Context.
The European Space Agency’s
Gaia
satellite was launched into orbit around L2 in December 2013. This ambitious mission has strict requirements on residual systematic errors resulting from ...instrumental corrections in order to meet a design goal of sub-10 microarcsecond astrometry. During the design and build phase of the science instruments, various critical calibrations were studied in detail to ensure that this goal could be met in orbit. In particular, it was determined that the video-chain offsets on the analogue side of the analogue-to-digital conversion electronics exhibited instabilities that could not be mitigated fully by modifications to the flight hardware.
Aims.
We provide a detailed description of the behaviour of the electronic offset levels on short (<1 ms) timescales, identifying various systematic effects that are known collectively as “offset non-uniformities”. The effects manifest themselves as transient perturbations on the gross zero-point electronic offset level that is routinely monitored as part of the overall calibration process.
Methods.
Using in-orbit special calibration sequences along with simple parametric models, we show how the effects can be calibrated, and how these calibrations are applied to the science data. While the calibration part of the process is relatively straightforward, the application of the calibrations during science data processing requires a detailed on-ground reconstruction of the readout timing of each charge-coupled device (CCD) sample on each device in order to predict correctly the highly time-dependent nature of the corrections.
Results.
We demonstrate the effectiveness of our offset non-uniformity models in mitigating the effects in
Gaia
data.
Conclusions.
We demonstrate for all CCDs and operating instrument/modes on board
Gaia
that the video-chain noise-limited performance is recovered in the vast majority of science samples.
Context The European Space Agency's Gaia satellite was launched into orbit around L2 in December 2013. This ambitious mission has strict requirements on residual systematic errors resulting from ...instrumental corrections in order to meet a design goal of sub-10 microarcsecond astrometry. During the design and build phase of the science instruments, various critical calibrations were studied in detail to ensure that this goal could be met in orbit. In particular, it was determined that the video-chain offsets on the analogue side of the analogue-to-digital conversion electronics exhibited instabilities that could not be mitigated fully by modifications to the flight hardware. Aims We provide a detailed description of the behaviour of the electronic offset levels on short (<<1 ms) timescales, identifying various systematic effects that are known collectively as 'offset non-uniformities'. The effects manifest themselves as transient perturbations on the gross zero-point electronic offset level that is routinely monitored as part of the overall calibration process. Methods Using in-orbit special calibration sequences along with simple parametric models, we show how the effects can be calibrated,and how these calibrations are applied to the science data. While the calibration part of the process is relatively straightforward, the application of the calibrations during science data processing requires a detailed on-ground reconstruction of the readout timing of each charge-coupled device (CCD) sample on each device in order to predict correctly the highly time-dependent nature of the corrections. Results We demonstrate the effectiveness of our offset non-uniformity models in mitigating the effects in Gaia data. Conclusions We demonstrate for all CCDs and operating instrumentmod es on board Gaia that the video-chain noise-limited performance is recovered in the vast majority of science sample
Since the launch of ESA's Gaia satellite in December 2013, the 106 large-format scientific CCDs onboard have been operating at L2. Due to a combination of the high-precision measurement requirements ...of the mission and the predicted proton environment at L2, the effect of non-ionizing radiation damage on the detectors was early identified pre-launch as potentially imposing a major limitation on the scientific value of the data. In this paper we compare pre-flight radiation-induced Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI) predictions against in-flight measurements, focusing especially on charge injection diagnostics, as well as correlating these CTI diagnostic results with solar proton event data. We show that L2-directed solar activity has been relatively low since launch, and radiation damage (so far) is less than originally expected. Despite this, there are clear cases of correlation between earth-directed solar coronal mass ejection events and abrupt changes in CTI diagnostics over time. These sudden jumps are lying on top of a rather constant increase in CTI which we show is primarily due to the continuous bombardment of the devices by high-energy Galactic Cosmic Rays. We examine the possible reasons for the lower than expected levels of CTI as well as examining the effect of controlled payload heating events on the CTI diagnostics. Radiation-induced CTI in the CCD serial registers and effects of ionizing radiation are also correspondingly lower than expected, however these topics are not examined here in detail.
ESA recently called for new "Science Ideas" to be investigated in terms of feasibility and technological developments -- for technologies not yet sufficiently mature. These ideas may in the future ...become candidates for M or L class missions within the ESA Science Program. With the launch of Gaia in December 2013, Europe entered a new era of space astrometry following in the footsteps of the very successful Hipparcos mission from the early 1990s. Gaia is the successor to Hipparcos, both of which operated in optical wavelengths, and Gaia is two orders of magnitude more accurate in the five astrometric parameters and is surveying four orders of magnitude more stars in a vast volume of the Milky Way. The combination of the Hipparcos/Tycho-2 catalogues with the first early Gaia data release will give improved proper motions over a long ~25 year baseline. The final Gaia solution will also establish a new optical reference frame by means of quasars, by linking the optical counterparts of radio (VLBI) sources defining the orientation of the reference frame, and by using the zero proper motion of quasars to determine a non-rotating frame. A weakness of Gaia is that it only operates at optical wavelengths. However, much of the Galactic centre and the spiral arm regions, important for certain studies, are obscured by interstellar extinction and this makes it difficult for Gaia to deeply probe. Traditionally, this problem is overcome by switching to the infra-red but this was not possible with Gaia's CCDs. Additionally, to scan the entire sky and make global absolute parallax measurements the spacecraft must have a constant rotation and this requires that the CCDs operate in TDI mode, increasing their complexity.
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