Image of the Week

Gaia and the size of the Solar system

 

Figure 1: Distance of a solar system body by triangulation on the Earth. Two observers in A and B perform astronomical sights to the planet P to get the two angles at A and B. The distance of the baseline AB is known from a combination of astronomical and geodetic measurements. The distance to the planet is computed by resolving the triangle with simple trigonometry. Image source : GAIA-C4-TN-OCA-FM-061

1 - Objective and principles

If one asks anyone familiar with Gaia what the spacecraft and the DPAC scientists are doing, chances are that the answer will mention the Milky Way, the positions and distances of the stars, the quasars rather than the size of the solar system. Undoubtedly the mission has been shaped out to explore firstly the stellar world, but also the positions of small bodies in the solar system, but in no case to estimate the distance to the Sun. This is a topic outside the scope of Gaia, and above all, since 2012 the astronomical unit (au) is a defining constant of the system of units used by astronomers and for this reason no longer the subject of measurements.

However in 2019 and 2020, the minor planets Eros and 1998 OR2 came relatively close to the Earth, at less than one fourth of the distance to the Sun. This fortunate feature has allowed Gaia scientists to repeat on a grander scale a technique used by astronomers of the past centuries (actually until 1950, not long ago) to find the true scale of the solar system. Not really for science, this scale is well known today, but for the purpose of education and stressing a fundamental principle of Gaia, the aptly named trigonometric triangulation, put into operation in a simpler framework than with the stars.

Hence in this story, unlike most others published on the Gaia website, there is no cutting-edge science derived from Gaia data, but just the revival of an old-fashioned technique to ascertain distances in the Solar system. Likewise, this offers an opportunity to provide students, teachers, young astronomers, historians of astronomy, data scientists with observations carried out with a spacecraft to train in astrometry, astronomical computing, data analysis with the pleasure of finding a result that would have been a top level publication in 1960, not that far in the past for astronomers.

Figure 2. Triangulation of a minor planet between the Earth and Gaia. Same as in Fig. 1, but with a much larger baseline of 1.5 million kilometres. Image source : GAIA-C4-TN-OCA-FM-061

 

2- Triangulation in astronomy

The principle of measurement put into its simplest form is just a trigonometric resolution of a triangle and has been known for centuries. It was applied by Hipparchus to the Moon, before it was effectively used for the solar parallax in the XVIIth century by J.D. Cassini in Paris and J. Flamsteed in London and successfully extended to the stars by F.W. Bessel in the XIXth century. Today this is the ground technique employed by Gaia to gauge the Universe.

The principle is illustrated in Figure 1, with two observers located in A and B measuring the direction of a planet at P. Given the finite distance to the planet, the two lines AP and BP are not parallel to each other, and the angles in A and B are slightly different. The larger the baseline AB, the bigger the difference between the two angles. But the solar system is big compared to the size of the Earth, and the figure is not to scale. In every practical case met in the past, the angle at P was always small, if not very small, at most 100 seconds of an arc in the most favourable circumstances. Unfortunately one cannot play with the distance of the planets, but can we have a bigger baseline to increase the angle P?

This is where Gaia comes into play. Replace one of the observers by Gaia as in Figure 2, and all of a sudden the baseline grows from less than 10,000 km to 1.5 million km, while the angle at P goes up to several degrees. A factor 150 almost for free, given the fact that no particular constraint is requested from the Gaia operations. Gaia is scanning the sky and the planetary targets are found within the normal programme by mining the data flow.

 

Figure 3. Distance to the Earth and to Gaia of 1998 OR2 around its fly-by. The vertical dashed lines indicate the date of the Gaia observations. Image source : GAIA-C4-TN-OCA-FM-061

 

3 - Gaia observations

We were fortunate that Gaia observed both Eros and 1998 OR2 several times during the oppositions of 2019 and 2020, and by a stroke of chance for 1998 OR2, within days of its closest approach, as it can be seen in Figure 3. Altogether there were 10 successful on-board detections over four epochs given in Table 1. Thanks to the performance of the Gaia finder, one has relatively good positions (0.06" accuracy) at each passage, quickly available internally for the Gaia sanity monitoring. This data is normally for internal use and not made public. But given the interest of this project for education, these positions have been made accessible through the Minor Planet Center (MPC) and in this document.

Table 1: Passages of Eros and 1998 OR2 observed with Gaia in 2019 and 2020. Nobs is the number of detected transits with Gaia during the passage. E and G are the distances to the Earth and to Gaia. The last column is the parallactic angle. Table source : GAIA-C4-TN-OCA-FM-061

 

It is important to stress that the detection accuracy is not, and by far, the final Gaia astrometric accuracy for these observations (better than 1 mas) that won't be available before 2024 when the full processing of the 2019-2020 observations is completed. However this accuracy is largely enough for our purpose, and even better than the observations done on the Earth.

Ground-based observers being stimulated by the close approaches of asteroids, there is a large number of observations stored in the MPC system, giving the time of observation, the location of the observer and the recorded position of the planets. None is exactly synchronous with Gaia, but it was possible to interpolate within a day to get approximate Earth-centred observations at the same times as Gaia. The animation provided below (from Paolo Tanga, who is in charge of the Solar system group for Gaia) shows the displacement of 1998 OR2 over several hundreds of seconds on 16 April 2020. These observations have been added to the MPC dataset for this analysis.

The passage of Eros is particularly significant given its relationship with the historical measurements of the astronomical unit. Until 1965, the two close approaches of Eros in 1901 (at 0.31 au) and 1931 (at 0.17 au) provided the best estimates of the solar parallax. In particular the value derived by Sir Harold Spencer-Jones in 1941 from the data collected 10 years earlier, remained the IAU reference value until 1968. The extensive discussion of thousands of measurements yielded a solar parallax of 8.790" ± 0.001", or equivalently 149.65 million kilometres for the mean Sun-Earth distance. The true error was in fact four times larger, giving a relative accuracy of about 0.0005. This was the best that could be achieved with the participation of 24 observatories over the world and nearly 3000 photographic plates with multiple images of Eros. It took 10 years to complete the analysis and reach a consensus about the size of the solar system. A simple principle may hide dreadful complexity in the details.
 

The asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 imaged through a 35 cm telescope close to its flyby with the Earth, on the evening of April 16, 2020. A sequence of hundreds of images taken 4 seconds apart have been assembled to create this animation, showing the motion of the nearby asteroid among the background stars. The sequence, which real duration is about 20 minutes, has been accelerated 200 times. Credits: P. Tanga, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (France); editing: G. Peretti, Torino (Italy).

 

4. Data analysis and result

The data analysis is rather straightforward and described in detail here. In Figure 2, by means of celestial mechanics, one can compute the paths of the minor planets with great accuracy with the distances expressed with the Earth-Sun distance as a yardstick. Therefore the length AP is known directly in astronomical units.

Now the baseline AB comes out naturally in km from the spacecraft regular tracking by ESOC experts, using Doppler technique or direct ranging. The measurements of the angles at A and B, combined with the baseline, allows us to resolve the triangle by simple trigonometry, and then compute AP in kilometres. By comparing to the same distance in astronomical unit, one deduces the value of the latter in kilometres. That's all!

The only small technical complication comes from the need to carry apparent directions obtained at the surface of the Earth, to the corresponding directions at the centre of the Earth, as if there were observers there taking sights of the planets. This needs the conversion between kilometres (station position on the Earth) to astronomical units (distance to the planet), but the required scale factor is precisely the goal of the whole project! So one must start from an approximate value and iterate, since this effect is just a correction. The whole procedure converges quickly and one can initially neglect this effect or, equivalently, place the planet at very large distance in comparison to the radius of the Earth.

At the end, the ten observations of Eros and that of 1998 OR2 give a solar parallax or the mean Sun-Earth distance to better than 0.00001 in relative error, about 50 times better than the best historical measurement relying on this technique, published in 1941. While this achievement is of no importance for contemporary science, it would have been a remarkable result in 1960.

Today, the only purpose of taking time to process this data should be to train young astronomers, physics teachers, historians of astronomy, and students in statistics to experiment with real data and see the difference between a very simple geometric principle and its use in the real world. Having large angles permits (almost) anyone interested to find the size of the solar system, but without dealing with the technical difficulties that arise when one has to deal with small angles. However, this is a very nice opportunity to link modern and historical techniques, to appreciate how real science is done, and for anyone to make ones own pathway in the art of astronomical computing.

 

Figure 4. Geometric configuration between the Earth, Gaia, and the planet 1998 OR2 during the Gaia observation of 28 April 2020. The large parallactic angle of 13 degrees is unique in the history of astronomy in the determination of the solar parallax. Image source : GAIA-C4-TN-OCA-FM-061

 

Further reading:

The Solar Parallax with Gaia / GAIA-C4-TN-OCA-FM-061

 

Credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, F. Mignard, P. Tanga, B. Carry, M. Delbo, L. Galluccio, F. Spoto, DPAC members at the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in Nice & and CfA/Harvard & Smithsonian (FS)

[Published: 22/07/2020]

 

Image of the Week Archive

2023

19/12: 10 Science topics to celebrate Gaia's 10 years in space

31/10: Gaia observes cosmic clock inside a heavenly jewel

10/10: Gaia Focused Product Release stories

27/09: Does the Milky Way contain less dark matter than previously thought?

22/09: Mass-luminosity relation from Gaia's binary stars

13/09: Gaia DPAC CU8 seminars

13/06: Gaia's multi-dimensional Milky Way

18/05: Mapping the Milky Way

15/05: Goonhilly station steps in to save Gaia science data

25/04: The Gaia ESA Archive

05/04: Dual quasar found to be hosted by an ongoing galaxy merger at redshift 2.17

21/03: GaiaVari: a citizen science project to help Gaia variability classificaton

09/02: Missing mass in Albireo Ac: massive star or black hole?

31/01: Gaia reaches to the clouds – 3D kinematics of the LMC

25/01: Meet your neighbours: CNS5 - the fifth catalogue of nearby stars

18/01: A single-object visualisation tool for Gaia objects

2022

25/11: 100 months of Gaia data

23/11: The astonishment

09/11: Gamma-Ray Burst detection from Lagrange 2 point by Gaia

04/11: Gaia's first black hole discovery: Gaia BH1

26/10: Are Newton and Einstein in error after all?

21/10: Gaia ESA Archive goes live with third data release

06/10: Mapping the interstellar medium using the Gaia RVS spectra

26/09: Gaia on the hunt for dual quasars and gravitational lenses

23/09: Gaia's observation of relativistic deflection of light close to Jupiter

13/06: Gaia Data Release 3

10/06: MK classification of stars from BP/RP spectrophotometry across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram

09/06: BP/RP low-resolution spectroscopy across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram

27/05: Cepheids and their radial velocity curves

23/05: The Galaxy in your preferred colours

19/05: GaiaXPy 1.0.0 released, a tool for Gaia's BP/RP spectra users

11/05: Systemic proper motions of 73 galaxies in the Local group

28/03: Gaia query statistics

16/03: Gaia's first photo shooting of the James Webb Space Telescope

08/03: Gaia's women in science - coordination unit 8

25/02: Not only distances: what Gaia DR3 RR Lyrae stars will tell us about our Galaxy and beyond

11/02: Gaia's women in science

31/01: Astrometric orbit of the exoplanet-host star HD81040

12/01: The Local Bubble - source of our nearby stars

05/01: A Milky-Way relic of the formation of the Universe

2021

23/12: Signal-to-Noise ratio for Gaia DR3 BP/RP mean spectra

22/12: The 7 October 2021 stellar occultation by the Neptunian system

01/12: Observation of a long-predicted new type of binary star

24/09: Astrometric microlensing effect in the Gaia16aye event

22/09: the power of the third dimension - the discovery of a gigantic cavity in space

16/09: An alternative Gaia sky chart

25/08: Gaia Photometric Science Alerts and Gravitational Wave Triggers

09/07: How Gaia unveils what stars are made of

23/06: Interviews with CU3

27/04: HIP 70674 Orbital solution resulting from Gaia DR3 processing

30/03: First transiting exoplanet by Gaia

26/03: Apophis' Yarkovsky acceleration improved through stellar occultation

26/02: Matching observations to sources for Gaia DR4

2020

22/12: QSO emission lines in low-resolution BP/RP spectra

03/12: Gaia Early Data Release 3

29/10: Gaia EDR3 passbands

15/10: Star clusters are only the tip of the iceberg

04/09: Discovery of a year long superoutburst in a white dwarf binary

12/08: First calibrated XP spectra

22/07: Gaia and the size of the Solar System

16/07: Testing CDM and geometry-driven Milky Way rotation Curve Models

30/06: Gaia's impact on Solar system science

14/05: Machine-learning techniques reveal hundreds of open clusters in Gaia data

20/03: The chemical trace of Galactic stellar populations as seen by Gaia

09/01: Discovery of a new star cluster: Price-Whelan1

08/01: Largest ever seen gaseous structure in our Galaxy

2019
20/12: The lost stars of the Hyades
06/12: Do we see a dark-matter like effect in globular clusters?
12/11: Hypervelocity star ejected from a supermassive black hole
17/09: Instrument Development Award
08/08: 30th anniversary of Hipparcos
17/07: Whitehead Eclipse Avoidance Manoeuvre
28/06: Following up on Gaia Solar System Objects
19/06: News from the Gaia Archive
29/05: Spectroscopic variability of emission lines stars with Gaia
24/05: Evidence of new magnetic transitions in late-type stars
03/05: Atmospheric dynamics of AGB stars revealed by Gaia
25/04: Geographic contributions to DPAC
22/04: omega Centauri's lost stars
18/04: 53rd ESLAB symposium "the Gaia universe"
18/02: A river of stars
2018
21/12: Sonification of Gaia data
18/12: Gaia captures a rare FU Ori outburst
12/12: Changes in the DPAC Executive
26/11:New Very Low Mass dwarfs in Gaia data
19/11: Hypervelocity White Dwarfs in Gaia data
15/11: Hunting evolved carbon stars with Gaia RP spectra
13/11: Gaia catches the movement of the tiny galaxies surrounding the Milky Way
06/11: Secrets of the "wild duck" cluster revealed
12/10: 25 years since the initial GAIA proposal
09/10: 3rd Gaia DPAC Consortium Meeting
30/09: A new panoramic sky map of the Milky Way's Stellar Streams
25/09: Plausible home stars for interstellar object 'Oumuamua
11/09: Impressions from the IAU General Assembly
30/06: Asteroids in Gaia Data
14/06: Mapping and visualising Gaia DR2

25/04: In-depth stories on Gaia DR2

14/04: Gaia tops one trillion observations
16/03: Gaia DR2 Passbands
27/02: Triton observation campaign
11/02: Gaia Women In Science
29/01: Following-up on Gaia
2017
19/12: 4th launch anniversary
24/11: Gaia-GOSA service
27/10: German Gaia stamp in the making
19/10: Hertzsprung-russell diagram using Gaia DR1
05/10: Updated prediction to the Triton occultation campaign
04/10: 1:1 Gaia model arrives at ESAC
31/08: Close stellar encounters from the first Gaia data release
16/08: Preliminary view of the Gaia sky in colour
07/07: Chariklo stellar occultation follow-up
24/04: Gaia reveals the composition of asteroids
20/04: Extra-galactic observations with Gaia
10/04: How faint are the faintest Gaia stars?
24/03: Pulsating stars to study Galactic structures
09/02: Known exoplanetary transits in Gaia data
31/01: Successful second DPAC Consortium Meeting
2016
23/12: Interactive and statistical visualisation of Gaia DR1 with vaex
16/12: Standard uncertainties for the photometric data (in GDR1)
25/11: Signature of the rotation of the galactic bar uncovered
15/11: Successful first DR1 Workshop
27/10: Microlensing Follow-Up
21/10: Asteroid Occultation
16/09: First DR1 results
14/09: Pluto Stellar Occultation
15/06: Happy Birthday, DPAC!
10/06: 1000th run of the Initial Data Treatment system
04/05: Complementing Gaia observations of the densest sky regions
22/04: A window to Gaia - the focal plane
05/04: Hipparcos interactive data access tool
24/03: Gaia spots a sunspot
29/02: Gaia sees exploding stars next door
11/02: A new heart for the Gaia Object Generator
04/02: Searching for solar siblings with Gaia
28/01: Globular cluster colour-magnitude diagrams
21/01: Gaia resolving power estimated with Pluto and Charon
12/01: 100th First-Look Weekly Report
06/01: Gaia intersects a Perseid meteoroid
2015
18/12: Tales of two clusters retold by Gaia
11/11: Lunar transit temperature plots
06/11: Gaia's sensors scan a lunar transit
03/11: Celebrity comet spotted among Gaia's stars
09/10: The SB2 stars as seen by Gaia's RVS
02/10: The colour of Gaia's eyes
24/09: Estimating distances from parallaxes
18/09: Gaia orbit reconstruction
31/07: Asteroids all around
17/07: Gaia satellite and amateur astronomers spot one in a billion star
03/07: Counting stars with Gaia
01/07: Avionics Model test bench arrives at ESOC
28/05: Short period/faint magnitude Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud
19/05: Visualising Gaia Photometric Science Alerts
09/04: Gaia honours Einstein by observing his cross
02/04: 1 April - First Look Scientists play practical joke
05/03: RR Lyrae stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud as seen by Gaia
26/02: First Gaia BP/RP deblended spectra
19/02: 13 months of GBOT Gaia observations
12/02: Added Value Interface Portal for Gaia
04/02: Gaia's potential for the discovery of circumbinary planets
26/01: DIBs in three hot stars as seen by Gaia's RVS
15/01: The Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution
06/01: Close encounters of the stellar kind
2014
12/12: Gaia detects microlensing event
05/12: Cat's Eye Nebula as seen by Gaia
01/12: BFOSC observation of Gaia at L2
24/11: Gaia spectra of six stars
13/11: Omega Centauri as seen by Gaia
02/10: RVS Data Processing
12/09: Gaia discovers first supernova
04/08: Gaia flag arrives at ESAC
29/07: Gaia handover
15/07: Eclipsing binaries
03/07: Asteroids at the "photo finish"
19/06: Calibration image III - Messier 51
05/06: First Gaia BP/RP and RVS spectra
02/06: Sky coverage of Gaia during commissioning
03/04: Gaia source detection
21/02: Sky-background false detections in the sky mapper
14/02: Gaia calibration images II
06/02: Gaia calibration image I
28/01: Gaia telescope light path
17/01: First star shines for Gaia
14/01: Radiation Campaign #4
06/01: Asteroid detection by Gaia
2013
17/12: Gaia in the gantry
12/12: The sky in G magnitude
05/12: Pre-launch release of spectrophotometric standard stars
28/11: From one to one billion pixels
21/11: The Hipparcos all-sky map
15/10: Gaia Sunshield Deployment Test
08/10: Initial Gaia Source List
17/09: CU1 Operations Workshop
11/09: Apsis
26/08: Gaia arrival in French Guiana
20/08: Gaia cartoons
11/07: Model Soyuz Fregat video
01/07: Acoustic Testing
21/06: SOVT
03/06: CU4 meeting #15
04/04: DPCC (CNES) 
26/03: Gaia artist impression 
11/02: Gaia payload testing  
04/01: Space flyby with Gaia-like data
2012
10/12: DPAC OR#2. Testing with Planck
05/11: Galaxy detection with Gaia
09/10: Plot of part of the GUMS-10 catalogue
23/07: "Gaia" meets at Gaia
29/06: The Sky as seen by Gaia
31/05: Panorama of BAM clean room
29/03: GREAT school results
12/03: Scanning-law movie
21/02: Astrometric microlensing and Gaia
03/02: BAM with PMTS
12/01: FPA with all the CCDs and WFSs
2011
14/12: Deployable sunshield
10/11: Earth Trojan search
21/10: First Soyuz liftoff from the French Guiana
20/09: Fast 2D image reconstruction algorithm
05/09: RVS OMA
10/08: 3D distribution of the Gaia catalogue
13/07: Dynamical Attitude Model
22/06: Gaia's view of open clusters
27/05: Accuracy of the stellar transverse velocity
13/05: Vibration test of BAM mirrors
18/04: L. Lindegren, Dr. Honoris Causa of the Observatory of Paris
19/01: Detectability of stars close to Jupiter
05/01: Delivery of the WFS flight models
2010
21/12: The 100th member of CU3
17/11: Nano-JASMINE and AGIS
27/10: Eclipsing binary light curves fitted with DPAC code
13/10: Gaia broad band photometry
28/09: Measuring stellar parameters and interstellar extinction
14/09: M1 mirror
27/08: Quest for the Sun's siblings
 
Please note: Entries from the period 2003-2010 are available in this PDF document.