Related papers: Astrometry during the past 2000 years
Astrometry - the precise measurement of celestial positions and motions - is entering the micro-arcsecond ($\mu$as) era at multiple wavelengths, enabling new insights on compact objects across all mass scales. Here we review how…
We present a technique-led review of the progression of precise radio astrometry, from the first demonstrations, half a century ago, until to date and into the future. We cover the developments that have been fundamental to allow high…
The Kepler Mission, launched on Mar 6, 2009 was designed with the explicit capability to detect Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars using the transit photometry method. Results from just forty-three days of data…
At about 1000 days after the launch of Gaia we present the first Gaia data release, Gaia DR1, consisting of astrometry and photometry for over 1 billion sources brighter than magnitude 20.7. We summarize Gaia DR1 and provide illustrations…
The high accuracy of modern space astrometry requires the use of General Relativity to model the propagation of stellar light through the gravitational field encountered from a source to a given observer inside the Solar System. In this…
Much of the progress in Astronomy has been driven by instrumental developments, from the first telescopes to fiber fed spectrographs. In this review we describe the field of astrophotonics, a combination of photonics and astronomical…
The Gaia satellite, planned for launch by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2013, is the next generation astrometry mission following Hipparcos. Gaia's primary science goal is to determine the kinematics, chemical structure and evolution…
With the discovery of the first transiting extrasolar planetary system back to 1999, a great number of projects started to hunt for other similar systems. Because of the incidence rate of such systems was unknown and the length of the…
We discuss the opportunities for astronomical discovery via ground-based astrometry carried out in the United States during the 2010-2020 decade. We describe imminent scientific breakthroughs that can be achieved at both classic astrometric…
Gaia will be ESA's milestone astrometric mission, and is due for launch at the end of 2013. Gaia will repeatedly map the whole sky measuring about one billion sources to V=20-22 mag. Its data products will be {\mu}as accuracy astrometry,…
Astronomical observing has been greatly simplified by the development and implementation of digital imaging techniques and remote observing. Aperture photometry of CCD data permits photometric measurements to be made routinely with…
The release of Gaia catalog is revolutionary to the astronomy of solar system objects. After some effects such as atmospheric refraction and CCD geometric distortion have been taken into account, the astrometric precision for ground-based…
From the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th century, photographic plates served as the primary detectors for astronomical observations. Astronomical photographic observations in China began in 1901, and over a century, a total of…
A critical assessment of the quality of the Hipparcos data, partly supported by a completely new analysis of the raw data, is presented with the aim of clarifying reliability issues that have surfaced since the publication of the Hipparcos…
The application of photography to astronomy was a critical step in the development of astrophysics at the end of the nineteenth century. Using custom-built photographic telescopes and objective prisms, astronomers took images of the sky on…
In the context of the ESA M5 (medium mission) call we proposed a new satellite mission, Theia, based on relative astrometry and extreme precision to study the motion of very faint objects in the Universe. Theia is primarily designed to…
Astrophotonics lies at the interface of astronomy and photonics. This burgeoning field -- now formally recognized by the optics community -- has emerged over the past decade in response to the increasing demands of astronomical…
Adaptive Optics is a prime example of how progress in observational astronomy can be driven by technological developments. At many observatories it is now considered to be part of a standard instrumentation suite, enabling ground-based…
Gaia is a satellite mission of the ESA, aiming at absolute astrometric measurements of about one billion stars (all stars down to 20th magnitude, with unprecedented accuracy. Additionally, magnitudes and colors will be obtained for all…
High precision astrometry provides the foundation to resolve many fundamental problems in astrophysics. The application of astrometric studies spans a wide range of fields, and has undergone enormous growth in recent years. This is as a…