Max Planck Institute for Astronomy - Annual Report 2007

14 I. General
Fig. I.6: Foreseen design of JWST, the successor of the hu b b L e
Space Telescope to be launched in 2013, with the large primary
mirror and the characteristic sun shield.
The MPIA is also leading a major data analysis aspect
of esa's Ga i a project, a space observatory scheduled for
launch between 2010 and 2012. ga i a will be the successor
to the hi P Pa r c o s astrometry satellite, exceeding the
latter's sensitivity by several orders of magnitude. The
satellite will measure positions, magnitudes, and radial
velocities of one billion stars, in addition to numerous
galaxies, quasars and asteroids. The telescope will provide
photometric data in 15 spectral bands as well as
spectra in a selected spectral range. Unlike hi P Pa r c o s,
Point source sensitivity (1 h , 5) [Jy]
1
0.01
10 –4
10 –6
10 –8
10 –10
LAICA
CHEOPS
2000
LUCIFER
LINC-NIRVANA
MIDI
NIRSPEC
MATISSE
DARWIN
(est.)
HERSCHEL-PACS
JWST
MIRI
1 10
Wavelength [m]
100
however, ga i a need not be provided with an input catalogue,
but will measure systematically all accessible objects.
An automatic object classification will thus be of
major importance for data analysis. At present, concepts
for coping with this demanding task are being developed
at the MPIA (supported by a grant from DLR).
eu c L i d, an esa Cosmic Visions mission, has the goal
of mapping the geometry of the dark Universe by studying
the distance-redshift relationship and the evolution of
cosmic structures. To this end, the shapes and redshifts
of galaxies and galaxy clusters will be measured out to
Fig. I.7: The Institute̓s major instruments. Left: sensitivity as a
function of wavelength. Right: spatial resolution as a function
of the field of view.
Spatial resolution [milliarcsec]
1
10
100
1000
10 4
10 5
MATISSE
MIDI
DARWIN
SPHERE
JWST
MIRI
LINC-NIRVANA
CONICA/
LUCIFER
2000
HERSCHEL-PACS
NIRSPEC
PRIME
LAICA
1 10 100
Field of view
1000 10000