Related papers: Ground-Based Astrometry 2010-2020
The fields of occultation and microlensing are linked historically. Early this century, occultation of the Sun by the Moon allowed the apparent positions of background stars projected near the limb of the Sun to be measured and compared…
I present an overview of the science goals and achievements of ongoing spectroscopic surveys of individual stars in the nearby Universe. I include a brief discussion of the development of the field of Galactic Archaeology - using the fossil…
Our understanding of how the Galaxy was formed and evolves is severely hampered by the lack of precise constraints on basic stellar properties such as distances, masses, and ages. Here, we show that solar-like pulsating red giants represent…
This is a summary of the `Astronomy Perspective' of the 4th meeting on 'Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy' held at Penn State University in June 2006. We comment on trends in the Astronomy community towards Bayesian methods and…
The reports from 2008: "Astrometry and optics during the past 2000 years", are available at arXiv and at my website: www.astro.ku.dk/~erik/History.pdf . Here are now further contributions to the history of astrometry related to space…
Occultations of stars by asteroids have been observed since 1961, increasing from a very small number to now over 500 annually. We have created and regularly maintain a growing data-set of more than 5,000 observed asteroidal occultations.…
The next decade promises an observational revolution which will change cosmology forever. The precise measurement of the angular anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background should specify to a few percent all of the parameters of the…
The properties of Milky Way satellite galaxies have important implications for galaxy formation, reionization, and the fundamental physics of dark matter. However, the population of Milky Way satellites includes the faintest known galaxies,…
The main aim of this paper is to study the astrophysical behavior of open clusters' properties along the Milky Way Galaxy. Near-IR JHK (2MASS) photometry has been used for getting a homogeneous Catalog of 263 open clusters' parameters,…
The GAIA Observatory, ESA's Cornerstone 6 mission, addresses the origin and evolution of our Galaxy, and a host of other scientific challenges. GAIA will provide unprecedented positional and radial velocity measurements with the accuracies…
Science opportunities and recommendations concerning optical/infrared polarimetry for the upcoming decade in the field of Galactic science. Community-based White Paper to Astro2010 in response to the call for such papers.
The answers to fundamental science questions in astrophysics, ranging from the history of the expansion of the universe to the sizes of nearby stars, hinge on our ability to make precise measurements of diverse astronomical objects. As our…
At the turn of the decade we arguably move from the era of precision cosmology to the era of galaxy formation. One approach to this problem will be via the construction of comprehensive galaxy samples. In this review I take the opportunity…
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), in its thirteen years of operation, has allowed us to observe properties of the universe humans have been able, until very recently, to probe only with their thoughts. This review presents a brief summary…
The Milky Way harbours two disks that appear distinct concerning scale-heights, kinematics, and elemental abundance patterns. Recent years have seen a surge of studies of the elemental abundance trends in the disks using high resolution…
HI observations in the 21cm line have been a principal tool for investigating the large-scale structure of the Milky Way. This review considers what was learned in the first decade after the discovery of the 21cm line, and how that…
Scope of this contribution is twofold. First, it describes the potential of the global astrometry mission Gaia for detecting and measuring planetary systems based on detailed double-blind mode simulations and on the most recent predictions…
Surveys of the local and distant Universe are the means to test and improve our models of galaxy formation. Substantial successes in the models are evident, while there is also considerable recent progress in identifying what remains to be…
Studies of galaxy clusters have proved crucial in helping to establish the standard model of cosmology, with a universe dominated by dark matter and dark energy. A theoretical basis that describes clusters as massive, multi-component,…
Science opportunities and recommendations concerning optical/infrared polarimetry for the upcoming decade in the field of cosmology. Community-based White Paper to Astro2010 in response to the call for such papers.