Gaia is out there!

On the night from 6-7 March 2014, we could observe, from two telescopes, TJO and TFRM, located at Montsec Observatory, Gaia oriented perpendicular to the Sun (SAA=0 deg). We show here two animations from the two different telescopes:

• Video from TJO telescope: We show a video with over 700 images obtained with the TJO during almost 4 hours. Gaia can be seen as a star moving from right to left in the center of the image. The changes in brightness are related to differences in the exposure time, which ranges from 5 to 20 seconds.

• Animation from TFRM telescope: It covers 3.5 hours with a gap of one hour (due to high humidity abort). It shows 22 exposures with an exposure time of 45 sec.

Gaia observed from Montsec