Related papers: Cosmological and kinematical criteria for the ICRF…

Based on the most complete list of the results of an individual comparison of the proper motions for stars of various programs common to the Hipparcos catalog, each of which is an independent realization of the inertial reference frame with…

Both the radio International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) and the optical Gaia Celestial Reference Frame (Gaia-CRF2) are derived from observations of jets produced by the Super Massive Black Holes (SMBH) powering active galactic nuclei…

In this manuscript, we show that three fundamental building blocks are supporting the Cosmological Principle. The first of them states that there is a special frame in the universe where the spatial geometry is intrinsically homogeneous and…

VLBI is unique, among the space geodetic techniques, in its contribution to defining and maintaining the International Celestial Reference Frame, providing precise measurements of coordinates of extragalactic radiosources. The quest for…

We use astrophysical data to shed light on fundamental physics by constraining parametrized theoretical cosmological and gravitational models. Gravitational parameters are those constants that parametrize possible departures from Einstein's…

Very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) technique allows us to determine positions of thousands of radio sources using the absolute astrometry approach. I have investigated the impact of a selection of observing frequencies in a range from…

The Caltech-Jodrell Bank VLBI surveys of bright extragalactic radio sources north of declination 35 deg were carried out between 1990 and 1995 using the Mark-II system, achieving images with a resolution of about 1 mas at 5 GHz. The CJ1…

Since its launch on October 2002, the INTEGRAL satellite has revolutionized our knowledge of the hard X-ray sky thanks to its unprecedented imaging capabilities and source detection positional accuracy above 20 keV. Nevertheless, many of…

We present new criteria for selecting HII regions from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) Point Source catalogue (PSC), based on an HII region catalogue derived manually from the all-sky Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).…

The International Gamma-ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) has been surveying the sky above 20 keV since its launch in 2002 providing new insights into the nature of the sources that populate our Universe at soft gamma-ray energies. The…

According to the cosmological principle, the Universe should appear isotropic, without any preferred directions, to an observer whom we may consider to be fixed in the co-moving co-ordinate system of the expanding Universe. Such an observer…

We describe the INTEGRAL reference catalog which classifies previously known bright X-ray and gamma-ray sources before the launch of INTEGRAL. These sources are, or have been at least once, brighter than ~1 mCrab above 3 keV, and are…

High-energy end of the cosmic-ray spectrum has provided us to check a validity of the Lorentz Invariance and the Relativity principle, through the observation of the so-called GZK cut-off. It is claimed in this report that the comoving…

To accurately link the radio and optical Celestial Reference Frames (CRFs) at optical bright end, i.e., with Gaia G band magnitude < 13, increasing number and improving sky distribution of radio stars with accurate astrometric parameters…

We present the second ROSAT all-sky survey source catalogue, hereafter referred to as the 2RXS catalogue. This is the second publicly released ROSAT catalogue of point-like sources obtained from the ROSAT all-sky survey (RASS) observations…

The recent claim by BICEP2 of evidence for primordial gravitational waves from inflation has focused interest on the potential for early-Universe cosmology using observations of gravitational waves. In addition to cosmic microwave…

The Gaia satellite will observe about one billion stars and other point-like sources. The astrometric core solution will determine the astrometric parameters (position, parallax, and proper motion) for a subset of these sources, using a…

We review observational tests for the homogeneity of the Universe on large scales. Redshift and peculiar velocity surveys, radio sources, the X-Ray Background, the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest and the Cosmic Microwave Background are used to set…

The detection of black-hole binaries at high redshifts is a cornerstone of the science case of third-generation gravitational-wave interferometers. The star-formation rate peaks at z~2 and decreases by orders of magnitude by z~10. Any…

The most recent all-sky surveys performed with the INTEGRAL and SWIFT satellites allowed the detection of more than 1500 sources in hard X-rays above 20 keV. About one quarter of them has no obvious counterpart at other wavelengths and…