Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur is a French public center for research with more than 450 emplyoees.
The GaiaMoons research project, supported by the French national research agency ANR, started on 1 Dec 2022 and aims at detecting and characterising asteroid satellites by exploiting the ultra-accurate astrometry obtained by the Gaia mission of the European Space Agency.
At the level of accuracy of Gaia, astrometric discovery of satellites can become an efficient technique, potentially exploring ranges of sizes and separations that remain difficult to access from the ground. Satellites discovered by astrometry should be validated and characterised through other techniques, including photometry and stellar occultations. Fully characterised systems can give access to fundamental asteroid properties such as density and shapes.
This position is for three years and focused on exploiting astrometry from Gaia DR3 (published in June 2023), the forthcoming Focused Data Release (FPR, end of 2023) and DR4.
The post-doc will also exploit other data both from Gaia and from the ground (available photometry, spectral classification, shape, size, rotational properties) to validate the candidate detections and obtain physical parameters of the binary systems.
Remote and 'on site' observation runs at different telescope facilities are possible.
Skills: knowledge about asteroid physical properties is required, experience in data exploitation and signal analysis is equally important.
The application should contain a detailed CV, a letter of motivation describing the interest for the position and the skills for the activities that are described. Letters of recommendation (maximum 2) should be sent directly by the reference persons to the e-mail above.
