Related papers: Mass estimators in the Gaia era
We introduce the tracer mass estimator. This is a new and simple way to estimate the enclosed mass from the projected positions and line of sight velocities of a tracer population (such as globular clusters, halo stars and planetary…
The Gaia second data release contains high-accuracy astrometric measurements of thousands of solar system bodies. These measurements raise the possibility of determining asteroid masses by modeling scattering events between massive objects…
The Gaia mission is expected to provide highly accurate astrometric, photometric, and spectroscopic measurements for about $10^9$ objects. Automated classification of detected sources is a key part of the data processing. Here a few aspects…
We show how to estimate the enclosed mass from the observed motions of an ensemble of test particles. Traditionally, this problem has been attacked through virial or projected mass estimators. Here, we examine and extend these…
Context. Astrometric gravitational microlensing can be used to determine the mass of a single star (the lens) with an accuracy of a few percent. To do so, precise measurements of the angular separations between lens and background star with…
Gaia will observe more than one billion objects brighter than V=20, including stars, asteroids, galaxies and quasars. As Gaia performs real time detection (i.e. without an input catalogue) the intrinsic properties of most of these objects…
The structural and dynamical properties of star clusters are generally derived by means of the comparison between steady-state analytic models and the available observables. With the aim of studying the biases of this approach, we fitted…
In its all-sky survey, the ESA global astrometry mission Gaia will perform high-precision astrometry and photometry for 1 billion stars down to $V = 20$ mag. The data collected in the Gaia catalogue, to be published by the end of the next…
The masses of stars and planets can be measured dynamically in binary systems. For an unresolved binary, time series astrometry yields some orbital parameters, but it cannot provide the component masses, because we observe only the motion…
The Gaia mission is reviewed together with the expected contents of the final catalogue. It is then argued that the ultimate goal of Galactic structure studies with Gaia astrometry should be to build a dynamical model of our galaxy which is…
Gaia is a satellite mission of the European Space Agency which is creating a catalogue of extremely accurate positions, distances and space motions of two billion stars in our Galaxy, along with more than one hundred thousand solar system…
A well constrained estimate of the distance remains one of the main factors to properly interpret the observations of accreting X-ray pulsars. Since these objects are typically well studied, multiple distance estimates obtained with…
In astrometric binaries, the presence of a dark, unseen star can be inferred from the gravitational pull it induces on its luminous binary companion. While the orbit of such binaries can be characterized with precise astrometric…
A projected mass estimator and a maximum likelihood estimator are developed to best determine the mass of stellar clusters from proper motion data. Both methods effectively account and correct for errors in the velocities, and provide an…
We use Gaia DR2 systemic proper motions of 45 satellite galaxies to constrain the mass of the Milky Way using the scale free mass estimator of Watkins et al. (2010). We first determine the anisotropy parameter $\beta$, and the tracer…
Observational data from the ESA astrometric mission Gaia determining the positions of celestial objects within an accuracy of few microarcseconds will be soon fully available. Other satellite-based space missions are currently planned to…
In its all-sky survey, Gaia will monitor astrometrically hundreds of thousands of main-sequence stars within $\approx200$ pc, looking for the presence of giant planetary companions within a few AUs from their host stars. Indeed, Gaia…
Major advancements in space science and detector technology brought about a revolution in global astrometry, the science of measuring distances and motions of stars in the Milky Way and in the local universe. From the first ESA astrometric…
High-precision astrometry well beyond the capacities of Gaia will provide a unique way to achieve astrophysical breakthroughs, in particular on the nature of dark matter, and a complete survey of nearby habitable exoplanets. In this…
The Gaia mission, with its unprecedented astrometric and photometric precision, combined with its Radial Velocity Spectrometer, will provide to the astronomical community a wealth of necessary constraints to disentangle between the…