Diva - A Small Satellite for Global Astrometry and Photometry

DIVA (Double Interferometer for Visual Astrometry) is a Fizeau interferometer on a small satellite. It will perform astrometric and photometric observations of at least 4 million stars. A launch in 2002 and a minimum mission length of 24 months are aimed at. A detailed description of the experiment can be obtained from the DIVA homepage at http://www.aip.de:8080/dso/diva. An overview is given by Röser et al., 1997.The limiting magnitude of DIVA is about V = 15 for spectral types earlier than M0, but drops to about V = 17.5 for stars later than M5. Table 1 gives a short overview on DIVA’s performance. DIVA will carry out a skysurvey complete to V = 12.5. For the first time this survey will comprise precise photometry in at least 8 bands in the wavelength range from 400 to 1000 nm.DIVA will improve parallaxes by a factor of 3 compared to Hipparcos; proper motions by at least a factor of 2 and, in combination with the Hipparcos observations, by a factor of 10 for Hipparcos stars. At least 30 times asmany stars as Hipparcos will be observed, and doing this DIVA will fill the gap in observations between Hipparcos and GAIA. DIVA’s combined astrometric and photometric measurements of high precision will have important impacts on astronomy and astrophysics in the next decade.