Summary: During the Hipparcos mission in September 1992, I presented a concept for using direct imaging on CCDs in scanning mode in a new and very powerful astrometric satellite, Roemer. The Roemer concept with larger aperture telescopes for higher accuracy was developed by ESA and a mission was approved in 2000, expected to be a million times better than Hipparcos. The present name Gaia for the mission reminds of an interferometric option also studied in the period 1993-97, and the evolution of optics and detection in this period is the main subject of the present report. The transition from an interferometric GAIA to a large Roemer was made on 15 January 1998. It will be shown that without the interferometric GAIA option, ESA would hardly have selected astrometry for a Cornerstone study in 1997, and consequently we would not have had the Roemer/Gaia mission.

Bibtex entry for this abstract:

@ARTICLE{2011arXiv1105.0879H,
author = {{H{\o}g}, E.},
title = "{Astrometry history: Roemer and Gaia}",
journal = {ArXiv e-prints}, archivePrefix = "arXiv",
eprint = {1105.0879}, primaryClass = "astro-ph.IM",
keywords = {Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, Astrophysics - Galaxy Astrophysics},
year = 2011,
month = may,
adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011arXiv1105.0879H},
adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}