Related papers: Astrometry for Dynamics
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…
Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high…
Astrometry from space has unique advantages over ground-based observations: the all-sky coverage, relatively stable, and temperature and gravity invariant operating environment delivers precision, accuracy and sample volume several orders…
The Gaia satellite was selected as a cornerstone mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) in October 2000 and confirmed in 2002 with a current target launch date of 2011. The Gaia mission will gather on the same observational principles…
Detection and orbit determination for thousands of planets with periods up to about 40 years would be obtained by astrometry from two Gaia-like missions, results which cannot be obtained by any other mission, planned or proposed. A billion…
Access to microarcsecond astrometry is now routine in the radio, infrared, and optical domains. In particular the publication of the second data release from the Gaia mission made it possible for every astronomer to work with easily…
We discuss the impact that Gaia, a European Space Agency (ESA) cornerstone mission that has been in scientific operations since July 2014, is expected to have on the definition of the cosmic distance ladder and the study of resolved stellar…
During the Hipparcos mission in September 1992, I presented a concept for using direct imaging on CCDs in scanning mode in a new and very powerful astrometric satellite, Roemer. The Roemer concept with larger aperture telescopes for higher…
The GAIA astrometric mission has recently been approved as one of the next two `cornerstones' of ESA's science programme, with a launch date target of not later than mid-2012. GAIA will provide positional and radial velocity measurements…
I present some of the highlights of the Gaia mission on massive stars and discuss what the fourth data release (DR4) will bring in late 2026. In the first part of the contribution I describe the different types of Gaia products available…
ESA's Gaia space astrometry mission is performing an all-sky survey of stellar objects. At the beginning of the nominal mission in July 2014, an operation scheme was adopted that enabled Gaia to routinely acquire observations of all stars…
The Gaia data will help to improve the construction of a luminosity function for the disk and the halo and will provide a more accurate determination of the age of our solar neighborhood. Moreover, reliable stellar dynamical investigations…
(Abridged) A consequence of the Earth's motion with respect to the CMB is that over a 10 year period it will travel a distance of ~800 AU. As first noted by Kardashev in 1986, this baseline can be used to carry out astrometric measurements…
The reports from 2008: "Astrometry and optics during the past 2000 years", are available at arXiv and at my website: www.astro.ku.dk/~erik/History.pdf . Here are now further contributions to the history of astrometry related to space…
The ESA Cornerstone Mission GAIA, to be launched prior to 2012 and with a nominal lifetime of 5 years, will improve the accuracy of Hipparcos astrometry by more than two orders of magnitude. GAIA high-precision global astrometric…
The Gaia satellite, to be launched in 2012, will offer an unprecedented survey of the whole sky down to magnitude 20. The multi-epoch nature of the mission provides a unique opportunity to study variable sources with their 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 NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission is a proposal submitted to ESA for its 2010 call for M-size mission within the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan. The main scientific goal of the NEAT mission is to detect and characterize…
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…
In this concluding article I recall the early history of the Gaia mission, showing that the original science case and expectations of wide community interest in Gaia data have been met. The quarter-century long partnership involving some…