Related papers: Mass estimators in the Gaia era
Advancement in astronomical observations and technical instrumentation implies taking into account the general relativistic effects due the gravitational fields encountered by the light while propagating from the star to the observer.…
With Gaia in orbit since December 2013 it is time to look at the future of fundamental astrometry and a time frame of 50 years is needed in this matter. A space mission with Gaia-like astrometric performance is required, but not necessarily…
Context: Observation of star occultations is a powerful tool to determine shapes and sizes of asteroids. This is key information necessary for studying the evolution of the asteroid belt and to calibrate indirect methods of size…
Gaia is an all sky, high precision astrometric and photometric satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) due for launch in 2010-2011. Its primary mission is to study the composition, formation and evolution of our Galaxy. Gaia will…
We lay out and apply methods to use proper motions of individual kinematic tracers for estimating the dynamical mass of star clusters. We first describe a simple projected mass estimator and then develop an approach that evaluates directly…
Distant objects in the solar system are crucial to better understand the history and evolution of its outskirts. The stellar occultation technique allows the determination of their sizes and shapes with kilometric accuracy, a detailed…
Gaia will perform astrometric measurements with an unprecedented resolution. Consequently, the electronics of the Astro instrument must time tag every measurement with a precision of a few nanoseconds. Hence, it requires a high stability…
Quasars are often considered to be point-like objects. This is largely true and allows for an excellent alignment of the optical positional reference frame of the ongoing ESA mission Gaia with the International Celestial Reference Frame.…
The wealth of information in the Gaia catalogue of exoplanets will constitute a fundamental contribution to several hot topics of the astrophysics of planetary systems. I briefly review the potential impact of Gaia micro-arsec astrometry in…
Context. The precise determinations of stellar mass at $\sim$1% provide important constraints on stellar evolution models. Accurate parallax measurements can also serve as independent benchmarks for the next Gaia data release. Aims. We aim…
In astronomy, we are witnessing an enormous increase in the number of source detections, precision, and diversity of measurements. Additionally, multi-epoch data is becoming the norm, making time-series analyses an important aspect of…
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…
A powerful method to measure the mass profile of a galaxy is through the velocities of tracer particles distributed through its halo. Transforming this kind of data accurately to a mass profile M(r), however, is not a trivial problem. In…
For binary systems with an unseen primary and a luminous secondary, the astrometric wobble of the secondary could be used to study the primary. With Gaia, it is possible to measure the mass of the black hole or neutron star with a luminous…
This paper presents the analytical solution of the inverse ray tracing problem for photons emitted by a star and collected by an observer located in the gravitational field of the Solar System. This solution has been conceived to suit the…
The trajectory of an interplanetary spacecraft can be used to test gravitation in the Solar System. Its determination relies on radio tracking and is limited by the uncertainty on the spacecraft non-gravitational acceleration. The addition…
Context: Occultations of stars by asteroids are an efficient method to study the properties of minor bodies, and can be exploited as tools to derive very precise asteroid astrometry relative to the target star. With the availability of…
Launch of the Gaia space observatory started a new era in astrometry when the accuracy of star coordinates increased by thousands of times. Significant improvement of accuracy was also expected for the coordinates of the Solar system…
We explore the possibility of detecting and characterizing the warp of the stellar disc of our Galaxy using synthetic Gaia data. The availability of proper motions and, for the brightest stars radial velocities, adds a new dimension to this…
Gaia mission will offer an exceptional opportunity to perform variability studies. The data homogeneity, its optimised photometric systems, composed of 11 medium and 4-5 broad bands, the high photometric precision in G band of one milli-mag…