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Dr. David
Hobbs
Docent in Astronomy
and Astrophysics
Senior Scientist (forskare),
Swedish National
Space Board
David's
main
scientific interests are focused on space astrometry with
the European Space Agency mission Gaia. The mission is planned to
be launched towards the second Lagrange point in late 2012 and will
determine accurate astrometric data for about one billion objects in
the magnitude range from 6 to 20. Accuracies of 8–25 microarcsec are
typically expected for the trigonometric parallaxes, positions at mean
epoch, and annual proper motions of simple (i.e., apparently single)
stars down to 15th magnitude. The astrometric data are complemented by
photometric and spectroscopic information collected with dedicated
instruments on board the Gaia satellite. The mission will result in an
astronomical database of unprecedented scope, accuracy and completeness
becoming available to the scientific community around 2020.
David joined Lund Observatory in 2007 to help develop the
core Astrometric Global Iterative Solution for ESA's GAIA mission.
Within this group he contributes to the development of data processing
algorithms and studies of fundamental physics results from the mission.
Examples include: astrometric source processing, micrometeoroid
handling in the attitude processing, reference frame rotation and tests
of general relativity.
David spent a number of years developing the flight-critical
onboard software for the XMM-Newton and Integral observatories. He was
also involved in developing precise orbit determination techniques for
low Earth orbit satellites. He spent a number of years working on
spacecraft attitude control algorithms for the Herschel and Planck
missions.
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