Related papers: Scouting the spectrum for interstellar travellers
Achieving laser-driven, reflective, relativistic light sails would represent a tremendous breakthrough for humankind, allowing us to advance our understanding of the solar system and deep space far beyond what we know from space probes,…
The past decades have witnessed a lot of progress in gravitational lensing with two main targets: stars and galaxies (with active galactic nuclei). The success is partially attributed to the continuous luminescence of these sources making…
An Earth-like extra-solar planet emits light which is many orders of magnitude fainter than that of the parent star. We propose a method of identifying bio-signature spectral lines in light from known extra-solar planets based on Fourier…
We are still in the early days of exoplanet discovery. Astronomers are beginning to model the atmospheres and interiors of exoplanets and have developed a deeper understanding of processes of planet formation and evolution. However, we have…
We introduce a new method of searching for and characterizing extra-solar planets. We show that by monitoring the center-of-light motion of microlensing alerts using the next generation of high precision astrometric instruments the…
Interstellar objects such as 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov offer a unique window into the formation and evolution of other star systems, yet the tracking and analysis of their trajectories remain limited to specialized research institutions.…
Among the many recommendations of the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020, we found that a priority area of research is to pave the pathways towards finding and characterizing habitable worlds. In this context, we aim to…
Stars twinkle because their light propagates through the atmosphere. The same phenomenon is expected when the light of remote stars crosses a Galactic - disk or halo - refractive medium such as a molecular cloud.We present the promising…
Future space missions will be driven by factors such as the need for reduced cost of spacecraft without diminished performance, new services and capabilities including reconfigurability, autonomous operations, target observation with…
Earth's future detectability depends upon the trajectory of our civilization over the coming centuries. Human civilization is also the only known example of an energy-intensive civilization, so our history and future trajectories provide…
Substantial progress in the field of the Local Interstellar Medium has been largely due to recent launches of space missions, mostly in the UV and X-ray domains, but also to ground-based observations, mainly in high resolution spectroscopy.…
Detecting exoplanets and other faint sources of emitted and reflected light near a bright star requires deeply suppressing the starlight while efficiently transmitting the dim light from its surroundings. This suppression can be carried out…
A moving mass makes a gravitational wake in the partially ionized interstellar medium, which acts as a lens for radio-frequency light. Consequently, plasma microlensing could complement gravitational microlensing in the search for invisible…
Star trackers are primarily optical devices that are used to estimate the attitude of a spacecraft by recognising and tracking star patterns. Currently, most star trackers use conventional optical sensors. In this application paper, we…
Upcoming NASA astrophysics missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope will search for signs of life on planets transiting nearby stars. Doing so will require co-adding dozens of transmission spectra to build up sufficient signal to…
In the last few years, the so-called flyby anomaly has been widely discussed, but remains still an illusive topic. This is due to the harsh conditions experienced during an Earth flyby as well as due to the limited data available. In this…
The use of a method of spectra disentangling for telluric lines is explained in detail, with a particular emphasis on high-precision radial-velocity measurements for the search for extrasolar planets. New improvements to the method are…
Moving objects have characteristic signatures in multi-spectral images made by Earth observation satellites that use push broom scanning. While the general concept is applicable to all satellites of this type, each satellite design has its…
We propose that astronomers will be eventually be able to discriminate between extrasolar Earth-like planets with surface oceans and those without using the shape of phase light curves in the visible and near-IR spectrum. We model the…
Interstellar objects (ISOs) represent a compelling and under-explored category of celestial bodies, providing physical laboratories to understand the formation of our solar system and probe the composition and properties of material formed…