Gaia People

Ulrike Heiter

Uppsala Astronomical Observatory (UAO)

Ulrike obtained her PhD in Astronomy from the University of Vienna in 2000. She was a post-doc at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, for two years before joining the Stellar Atmospheres Group at Uppsala University. Her main scientific interests lie in the area of stellar physics, specifically the physics of stellar atmospheres, stellar spectroscopy, and the application of both to study stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Ulrike has been involved with Gaia since 2004 (then as a member of the Photometry Working Group). In 2006 she became a member of the DPAC CU8, where she is contributing to workpackages concerned with calibrations of the astrophysical parameter determination. She acts as a representative of CU8 within the DPAC working group "Ground Based Obervations for Gaia".

At UAO, Ulrike's main project is "Stellar atmosphere models for Gaia" (funded by the Swedish National Space Board). This project is a collaboration with researchers at Nice (OCA) and elsewhere, which is devoted to calculating and testing stellar atmosphere models for late-type stars. The aim is to identify the most realistic atmospheric models - based on hydrodynamics in 3D for convection modelling and accounting for deviations from local thermodynamic equilibrium for spectral line formation - by comparing calculated observables to high-quality observed data.

Ulrike's homepage is here.

[Published: 19/06/2008]