Related papers: The Gaia Basic angle: measurement and variations
SOFIA is an airborne, gyroscopically stabilized 2.5m infrared telescope, mounted to a spherical bearing. Unlike its predecessors, SOFIA will work in absolute coordinates, despite its continually changing position and attitude. In order to…
The proposed infrared space interferometry mission Darwin has two main aims: (i) to detect and characterize exo-planets similar to the Earth, and (ii) to carry out astrophysical imaging in the wavelength range 6 - 20 micron at a sensitivity…
In this communication, we show how asteroids observations from the Gaia mission can be used to perform local tests of General Relativity (GR). This ESA mission, launched in December 2013, will observe --in addition to the stars-- a large…
Since July 2014, the Gaia mission has been engaged in a high-spatial-resolution, time-resolved, precise, accurate astrometric, and photometric survey of the entire sky. Aims: We present the Gaia Science Alerts project, which has been in…
The final astrometric data from the Gaia mission will transform our view of the stellar content of the Galaxy, particularly when complemented with spectroscopic surveys providing stellar parameters, line-of-sight kinematics and elemental…
In May 2013, I responded with the present paper to ESA's call for White Papers for the definition of Large missions. This was half a year before the launch of ESA's large astrometry mission Gaia. The present proposal for a Gaia successor…
GAIA observations of eclipsing binary stars will have a large impact on stellar astrophysics. Accurate parameters, including absolute masses and sizes will be derived for $\sim 10^4$ systems, orders of magnitude more than what has ever been…
We present the results of realistic end-to-end simulations of observations of nearby stars with the proposed global astrometry mission GAIA, recently recommended within the context of ESA's Horizon 2000 Plus long-term scientific program. We…
Coherent alignments of galaxy shapes, often called "intrinsic alignments" (IA), are the most significant source of astrophysical uncertainty in weak lensing measurements. We develop the tidal alignment model of IA and demonstrate its…
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…
The orbits and physical parameters of three detached, double-lined A-F eclipsing binaries have been derived combining H_P, V_T, B_T photometry from the Hipparcos/Tycho mission with 8500-8750 Ang ground-based spectroscopy, mimicking the…
An extremely sensitive all-sky survey will be carried out in the millimetre/submillimetre waveband by the forthcoming ESA mission Planck Surveyor. The main scientific goal of the mission is to make very accurate measurements of the spatial…
Galactic Archeology is about exploring the Milky Way as a galaxy by, mainly, using its (old) stars as tracers of past events and thus figure out the formation and evolution of our Galaxy. I will briefly outline some of the key scientific…
Accurate stellar masses are requested in order to improve our understanding of stellar interiors, but they are still rather rare. Fortunately, the forthcoming Gaia Mission will provide astrometric measurements permitting the derivation of…
We used 1,477,047 data from DR1-TGAS, in order to analyse the minimum require- ments of accuracy, necessary to detect sub-stellar objects in the astrometric mea- surements of Gaia. We found that the first set of data (DR1) does not have…
To use libraries of observed stellar spectra, one needs to know the atmospheric parameters of the stars associated to those spectra. It is, however, hard to know what are the real levels of precision and accuracy of these parameters. To…
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…
The Gaia mission is designed as a Galaxy explorer, and will measure simultaneously, in a survey mode, the five or six phase space parameters of all stars brighter than 20th magnitude, as well as providing a description of their…
Space-based gravitational wave detectors based on the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) design operate by synthesizing one or more interferometers from fringe velocity measurements generated by changes in the light travel time…
The ESA global astrometry space mission Gaia has been monitoring the position of a billion stars since 2014. The analysis of such a massive dataset is challenging in terms of the data processing involved. In particular, the blind detection…