Related papers: On the accuracy of close stellar approaches determ…
We study Milky Way kinematics using a sample of 18.8 million main-sequence stars with r<20 and proper-motion measurements derived from SDSS and POSS astrometry, including ~170,000 stars with radial-velocity measurements from the SDSS…
We discuss the prospects of high precision pointing of our transmitter to habitable planets around Galactic main sequence stars. For an efficient signal delivery, the future sky positions of the host stars should be appropriately…
We investigate the use of HI data to resolve the near/far ambiguity in kinematic distances of massive young stellar object (MYSO) candidates. Kinematic distances were obtained from 13CO 1-0 spectral line observations with the Mopra…
It is still unclear whether the Sagittarius spiral arm is a major spiral arm in the Galaxy or whether it just outlines a region of enhanced star formation because of the local compression of gas. The best way to separate these scenarios out…
Spectrophotometric distances to stars observed by large spectroscopic surveys offer a crucial complement to parallax distances that remain very important also after the future Gaia data releases. Here we present a probabilistic approach to…
Context: Accurate distance measurements are fundamental to the study of Planetary Nebulae (PNe) but have long been elusive. The most accurate and model-independent distance measurements for galactic PNe come from the trigonometric…
In this work we combine spectroscopic information from the \textit{SkyMapper survey for Extremely Metal-Poor stars} and astrometry from Gaia DR2 to investigate the kinematics of a sample of 475 stars with a metallicity range of $ -6.5 \leq…
We outline an approach yielding proper motions with higher precision than exists in present catalogs for a sample of stars in the Kepler field. To increase proper motion precision we combine first moment centroids of Kepler pixel data from…
We present a Bayesian method to cross-match 5,827,988 high proper motion Gaia sources ($\mu>40 \ mas \ yr^{-1}$) to various photometric surveys: 2MASS, AllWISE, GALEX, RAVE, SDSS and Pan-STARRS. To efficiently associate these objects across…
We study the dynamical properties of halo stars located in the Solar Neighbourhood. Our goal is to explore how the properties of the halo depend on the selection criteria used for defining a sample of halo stars. Once this is understood we…
The evolution of the star formation rate in the Galaxy is one of the key ingredients quantifying the formation and determining the chemical and luminosity evolution of galaxies. Many complementary methods exist to infer the star formation…
We report high precision, high cadence photometric measurements of the star HD 209458, which is known from radial velocity measurements to have a planetary mass companion in a close orbit. We detect two separate transit events at times that…
Probability density functions are determined from new stellar parameters for the distance moduli of stars for which the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) has obtained spectra with S/N>=10. Single-Gaussian fits to the pdf in distance modulus…
Stellar activity remains a limiting factor in measuring precise planet parameters from radial velocity spectroscopy, not least in the search for Earth mass planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars. One approach to mitigate…
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…
We investigate the utility of the 3-dimensional Two-Point Correlation Function (3D 2PCF) in quantifying substructure in the stellar halo of the Milky Way, particularly as a means of constraining the accretion history of our Galaxy. We use…
We search for the fastest stars in the subset of stars with radial velocity measurements of the second data release (DR2) of the European Space Agency mission Gaia. Starting from the observed positions, parallaxes, proper motions, and…
To determine the physical parameters of a transiting planet and its host star from photometric and spectroscopic analysis, it is essential to independently measure the stellar mass. This is often achieved by the use of evolutionary tracks…
New estimate of the distances of 36 nearby galaxies is presented. It is based on the calibration of the V- and I-band Period-Lumi- nosity relations for galactic Cepheids measured by the HIPPARCOS mission. The distance moduli are obtained in…
Mass ratios of widely separated, long-period, resolved binary stars can be directly estimated from the available data in major space astrometry catalogs, such as the ESA's Hipparcos and Gaia mission results. The method is based on the…