Related papers: Sub-Microarcsecond Astrometry with SIM-Lite: A Tes…
The Space Interferometry Mission PlanetQuest Light (or SIM-Lite) is a new concept for a space borne astrometric instrument, to be located in a solar Earth-trailing orbit. SIM-Lite utilizes technology developed over the past ten years for…
Precision astrometry at microarcsecond accuracy has application to a wide range of astrophysical problems. This paper is a study of the science questions that can be addressed using an instrument that delivers parallaxes at about 4…
(abridged) We present results from a detailed set of end-to-end numerical simulations of SIM narrow-angle astrometric measurements and data analysis to illustrate the enormous potential that SIM has for the discovery and characterization of…
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is a space-based long-baseline optical interferometer for precision astrometry. One of the primary objectives of the SIM instrument is to accurately determine the directions to a grid of stars,…
In a previous paper we described a method of estimating the single-measurement bias to be expected in astrometric observations of targets in crowded fields with the future Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). That study was based on a…
We present a novel technique to determine the absolute inclination of single stars using multi-wavelength sub-milliarcsecond astrometry. The technique exploits the effect of gravity darkening, which causes a wavelength-dependent astrometric…
SIM PlanetQuest (Space Interferometry Mission) is a space-borne Michelson interferometer for precision stellar astrometry, with a nine meter baseline, currently slated for launch in 2015. One of the principal science goals is the…
The accuracy of position measurements on stellar targets with the future Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) will be limited not only by photon noise and by the properties of the instrument (design, stability, etc.) and the overall…
We present theoretical analysis of the astrometric searches for extrasolar planets with the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). Particularly, we derive a model for the future measurements with SIM and discuss the problem of reliable…
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), with its launch date planned for 2005, has as its goal astrometry with ~ 1 micro-arcsecond accuracy for stars as faint as 20th mag. If the SIM lives to expectations it can be used to measure…
We present the basic elements and first results of an end-to-end simulation package whose purpose is to test the validity of the Space Interferometer Mission design. The fundamental simulation time step is one millisecond, with substructure…
Astrometry can detect rocky planets in a broad range of masses and orbital distances and measure their masses and three-dimensional orbital parameters, including eccentricity and inclination, to provide the properties of terrestrial…
We address the issue of relativistic stellar aberration requirements for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). Motivated by the importance of this issue for SIM, we have considered a problem of relative astrometric observations of two…
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is the instrument of choice when it comes to observing astrometric microlensing events where nearby, usually high-proper-motion stars (``lenses''), pass in front of more distant stars (``sources'').…
The Diffuse Microwave Emission Survey (DIMES) has been selected for a mission concept study for NASA's New Mission Concepts for Astrophysics program. DIMES will measure the frequency spectrum of the cosmic microwave background and diffuse…
Astrometric measurements of microlensing events can in principle determine both the "parallax" \tilde r_E and the "proper motion" \mu of an individual event which (combined with the Einstein time scale t_E) in turn yield the mass, distance,…
The Earth's atmospheric turbulence degrades the precision of ground-based astrometry. Here, we discuss these limitations and propose that, with proper treatment of systematics and by leveraging the many epochs available from the Korean…
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) will observe sources in crowded fields. Recent work has shown that source crowding can induce significant positional errors in SIM's astrometric measurements, even for targets many magnitudes brighter…
By combining SIM observations with ground-based photometry, one can completely solve microlensing events seen toward the Galactic bulge. One could measure the mass, distance, and transverse velocity of ~100 lenses to ~5% precision in only…
Astrometric detection of a stellar wobble on the plane of the sky will provide us a next breakthrough in searching extrasolar planets. The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is expected to achieve a high-precision astrometry as accurate as…