The Gaia group in Dresden: this is world leading astrometry research using one of the most important science satellites ESA has in its fleet right now. The Lohrmann Observatory is responsible for the relativistic modeling and special calibrations of the Gaia data. The extremely precise measurements of Gaia are used by the group to test general relativity and to study selected effects of fundamental physics.

We're actively researching and contributing to fundamental theoretical and practical aspects of general relativity. This work is important for the definition of modern astronomical coordinate systems and for the solution of specific technological problems, e.g. for the orbital movement of satellites.

Besides the long-term stability of asteroid orbits or exoplanetary systems we also work actively on the numerical computability of these orbits.

The movement of the earth is very variable because of many forces which influence the earth orbit and orientation. The goal of this research project is to develop numerical models which describe the earth movement with extreme precision.

The development and applications of chaos detection techniques to study high-dimensional dynamical systems related to modern physical problems like the energy transport in various types of nonlinear lattices and the behavior of granular media.

A central goal in the field of relativistic astrometry is the analytical solution for light trajectories through the gravitational field of the solar system towards the observer. The computation of such light trajectories is one central topic in our work for high precision astrometry.