By Jett Peters
Help Solve a Mystery While Saying Goodbye to Gaia!
The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission is coming to an end. The Gaia space observatory has been incredibly successful, recording the position of 1.8 billion celestial objects since it was first launched in 2013.
Despite Gaia’s tremendous success, not everything went to plan. The Gaia satellite was expected to have a magnitude of 18, which would have allowed Gaia to be traced by relatively small telescopes on Earth. Its magnitude, however, never registered as expected. Instead Gaia had a magnitude of 21. As a result, the Gaia satellite could only be tracked by telescopes 2m and larger, which are much fewer in number and harder to schedule.
It all worked out, but the mystery of why Gaia never registered at the expected magnitude has never been solved. Before Gaia is decommissioned/runs out of fuel the European Space Agency is planning to do an experiment which might just help them to figure out the magnitude discrepancy. They are planning to rotate Gaia’s sunshield to an inclination that will allow it to reflect greater amounts of the Sun’s light. Scientists are expecting the rotation to produce a magnitude of 14, which should allow it to be seen by amateurs with a telescope as small as 8 inches in aperture.
How can you help? The European Space Agency team is asking amateur astronomers to participate in observing and recording magnitude and color estimates from Gaia when it is in its rotated state and at its increased magnitude with the hope that this data will help them to understand why its expected magnitude was not reached.
Amateur astronomers can go to https://is.gd//Gaia_EOL for details on when to take the observations. Once the data is reduced, the team will welcome your contribution in hopes of solving a mystery over a decade old.
A number of astronomers at UDRO are planning to participate in the call for observations. Watch the discord group for details.
