Gaia People

Daniel Michalik

ESA/ESTEC, The Netherlands

Daniel Michalik works as a research fellow at ESA/ESTEC. His projects focus on the scientific exploitation of the Gaia results.

In past research, Daniel adapted Gaia's core astrometric solution for marginal cases. Those are cases when sources are observed insufficiently much for a good-quality stand-alone astrometric solution. As part of his PhD thesis "Tycho-Gaia and beyond: Combining data for precision astrometry", he and his advisors invented the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS; image of the week; detailed description; quasar extension). He also studied general mathematical strategies for the generation and incorporation of different prior information in astrometric solutions (HTPM paper; generic approach and theory following Bayes' rule).

Daniel obtained his Masters degree in Computer Science at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany). 2009/10 he worked as a Young Graduated Trainee at ESA/ESAC on LISA Pathfinder, Gaia, and synergies with Nano-JASMINE. In 2017, Daniel worked as on-site support astronomer for the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica, contributing to observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and of the event horizon around Sgr A* (Event Horizon Telescope; EHT/VLBI).

[Published: 1/12/2010 | Updated: 21/03/2016 | Updated: 05/03/2018]