Related papers: Gaia: The Astrometry Revolution
Gaia's astrometric solution aims to determine at least five parameters for each star, together with appropriate estimates of their uncertainties and correlations. This requires at least five distinct observations per star. In the early data…
Most of what we know about the formation of stars, and essentially everything we know about the formation of planets, comes from observations of our solar neighborhood within 2 kpc of the Sun. Before 2018, accurate distance measurements…
A complicated and ambitious space mission like Gaia needs a careful monitoring and evaluation of the functioning of all components of the satellite. This has to be performed on different time scales, by different methods, and on different…
In this proceeding, we show how observations of Solar System Objects with Gaia can be used to test General Relativity and to constrain modified gravitational theories. The high number of Solar System objects observed and the variety of…
Astrometric observations with Gaia are expected to play a valuable role in future exoplanet surveys. With current data from Gaia's third data release (DR3), we are sensitive to periods from less than 1 year to more than 4 years but, unlike…
Over the course of several years, stars trace helical trajectories as they traverse across the sky due to the combined effects of proper motion and parallax. It is well known that the gravitational pull of an unseen companion can cause…
Using the VLBA, the BeSSeL survey has provided distances and proper motions of young massive stars, allowing an accurate measure of the Galactic spiral structure. By the same technique, we are planning to map the inner Galaxy using…
Because of the recent technological advances, the key technologies needed for precision space optical astrometry are now in hand. The Microarcsecond Astrometry Probe (MAP) mission concept is designed to find 1 Earth mass planets at 1AU…
Photometric light curves suffer from fundamental degeneracies that limit surface information recovery. We demonstrate that astrometry enables access to complementary information through photocentre variations induced by rotating surface…
Due to dramatic improvements in the precision of astrometric measurements, the observation of light centroid shifts in observed stars due to intervening massive compact objects (`astrometric microlensing') will become possible in the near…
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…
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…
Asteroseismology has the capability of delivering stellar properties which would otherwise be inaccessible, such as radii, masses and thus ages of stars. When this information is coupled with classical determinations of stellar parameters,…
Gaia is a cornerstone mission in the science programme of the European Space Agency (ESA). The spacecraft construction was approved in 2006, following a study in which the original interferometric concept was changed to a direct-imaging…
The European Space Agency Gaia satellite, planned for launch in late 2013, will perform systematic astrometric observations of the whole sky over a five year period. During this mission many thousands of Solar System Objects down to…
We describe the preliminary results of a ground-based observing campaign aimed at building a grid of approximately 200 spectro-photometric standard stars (SPSS), with an internal $\simeq 1$\% accuracy (and sub-percent precision), tied to…
According to current plans, the SIM/NASA mission will be launched just after the end of operations for the Gaia/ESA mission. This is a new situation which enables long term astrometric projects that could not be achieved by either mission…
Since the onset of the `space revolution' of high-precision high-cadence photometry, asteroseismology has been demonstrated as a powerful tool for informing Galactic archaeology investigations. The launch of the NASA TESS mission has…
The Gaia satellite is a high-precision astrometry, photometry and spectroscopic ESA cornerstone mission, currently scheduled for launch in late 2011. Its primary science drivers are the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy.…
(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…