MODELLING THE INSTRUMENTS AND SIMULATING THE DATA STREAM

摘要

The simulation of the Gaia observations is a key tool for the preparation of the mission. Simulations have been, and continue to be, used to test and optimise the mission design. They allowed the development of a prototype of the Gaia Data Access and Analysis System, to start the development of the reduction and analysis algorithms and to develop prototypes of the on-board data handling algorithms. They are used to assess the final accuracy and finally prepare the scientific exploitation. Such a mission simulator is a long term project which has led to the development of a modular tool allowing progressive enhancement of the simulated data quality towards representative Gaia data. It combines models of the different astrophysical sources that Gaia will observe, providing spatial distribution, photometry, kinematics, spectra, etc, with a model of the satellite and its instruments. The development of those models is made within the Gaia Simulation Working Group which organises this development and provides access to the resulting simulations to the Gaia community. In this presentation we will describe this simulation effort, its organisation, development status, current applications and future enhancements.