Numerical simulations of asteroid signals on the GAIA focal plane Original Research Article

We present a numerical algorithm, based on a ray-tracing technique, to simulate the signals produced by asteroids crossing the fields of view of the GAIA astrometric detectors. The basic concepts of the simulation and their implementation in a numerical code are described, and some results are shown. We also present some computations of the photocenter displacement produced by extended objects having a given surface luminosity distribution, corresponding to asteroids obeying different possible scattering laws. A major application of our numerical simulator is to carry out a quantitative analysis of the actual capability of GAIA to obtain direct and accurate measurements of the apparent angular sizes of detected asteroids.