Issue |
A&A
Volume 574, February 2015
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A115 | |
Number of page(s) | 8 | |
Section | Astronomical instrumentation | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201425310 | |
Published online | 04 February 2015 |
The Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution
How to get 2.5 million parallaxes with less than one year of Gaia data
Lund ObservatoryDepartment of Astronomy and Theoretical Physics, Lund
University,
Box 43,
22100
Lund,
Sweden
e-mail: daniel.michalikastro.lu.se; lennartastro.lu.se; david@astro.lu.se
Received: 10 November 2014
Accepted: 24 December 2014
Context. The first release of astrometric data from Gaia will contain the mean stellar positions and magnitudes from the first year of observations, and proper motions from the combination of Gaia data with Hipparcos prior information (HTPM).
Aims. We study the potential of using the positions from the Tycho-2 Catalogue as additional information for a joint solution with early Gaia data. We call this the Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution (TGAS).
Methods. We adapt Gaia’s Astrometric Global Iterative Solution (AGIS) to incorporate Tycho information, and use simulated Gaia observations to demonstrate the feasibility of TGAS and to estimate its performance.
Results. Using six to twelve months of Gaia data, TGAS could deliver positions, parallaxes, and annual proper motions for the 2.5 million Tycho-2 stars, with sub-milliarcsecond accuracy. TGAS overcomes some of the limitations of the HTPM project and allows its execution half a year earlier. Furthermore, if the parallaxes from Hipparcos are not incorporated in the solution, they can be used as a consistency check of the TGAS/HTPM results.
Key words: astrometry / methods: data analysis / methods: numerical / space vehicles: instruments / parallaxes / proper motions
© ESO, 2015
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