Related papers: Gaia reference frame amid quasar variability and p…
Pulsars are special objects whose positions can be determined independently from timing, radio interferometric, and Gaia astrometry at sub-milliarcsecond (mas) precision; thus, they provide a unique way to monitor the link between dynamical…
Since its launch in 2013, the Gaia space telescope has provided precise measurements of the positions and magnitudes of over 1 billion stars. This has enabled extensive searches for stellar and sub-stellar companions through astrometric and…
Determination of absolute parallaxes by means of a scanning astrometric satellite such as Hipparcos or Gaia relies on the short-term stability of the so-called basic angle between the two viewing directions. Uncalibrated variations of the…
The high accuracy of modern space astrometry requires the use of General Relativity to model the propagation of stellar light through the gravitational field encountered from a source to a given observer inside the Solar System. In this…
Astrometry from the Gaia satellite and from the long-term combination of Hipparcos and Gaia are now sensitive to sky-plane accelerations as low as $\approx$1 m/s/yr. This paper quantifies and explores an important caveat: apparent nonlinear…
The Gaia satellite will survey the entire celestial sphere down to 20th magnitude, obtaining astrometry, photometry, and low resolution spectrophotometry on one billion astronomical sources, plus radial velocities for over one hundred…
The large number and all-sky distribution of quasars from different surveys, along with their presence in large, deep astrometric catalogs,enables the building of an optical materialization of the ICRS following its defining principles.…
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…
The second Gaia data release (GDR2) provides precise five-parameter astrometric data (positions, proper motions and parallaxes) for an unprecedented amount of sources (more than $1.3$ billion, mostly stars). The use of this wealth of…
The accuracy of stellar distances inferred purely from parallaxes degrades rapidly with distance. Proper motion measurements, when combined with some idea of typical velocities, provide independent information on stellar distances. Here I…
Gaia is a fully-approved all-sky astrometric and photometric survey due for launch in 2011. It will measure accurate parallaxes and proper motions for everything brighter than G=20 (ca. 10^9 stars). Its primary objective is to study the…
Using the light curve time series data for more than 11.7 million variable sources published in the Gaia Data Release 3, the average magnitudes, colors, and variability parameters have been computed for 0.836 million Gaia CRF objects, which…
Gaia parallax measurements for stars with poor astrometric fits -- as evidenced by high renormalized unit weight error (RUWE) -- are often assumed to be unreliable, but the extent and nature of their biases remain poorly quantified. High…
We present significantly improved proper motion measurements of the Milky Way's central stellar cluster. These improvements are made possible by refining our astrometric reference frame with a new geometric optical distortion model for the…
The Gaia satellite will observe about one billion stars and other point-like sources. The astrometric core solution will determine the astrometric parameters (position, parallax, and proper motion) for a subset of these sources, using a…
Astrometric missions like Gaia provide exceptionally precise measurements of stellar positions and proper motions. Gravitational waves traveling between the observer and distant stars can induce small, correlated shifts in these apparent…
Advances in optical astrometry allow us to infer the non-radial kinematic structure of the Universe directly from observations. Here I use a supervised machine learning neural network method to predict 1.57 million redshifts based on…
The Gaia all-sky astrometric survey is challenged by several issues affecting the spacecraft stability. Amongst them, we find the focus evolution, straylight and basic angle variations Contrary to pre-launch expectations, the image quality…
The spatial variations of the velocity field of local stars provide direct evidence of Galactic differential rotation. The local divergence, shear, and vorticity of the velocity field---the traditional Oort constants---can be measured based…
Estimating a distance by inverting a parallax is only valid in the absence of noise. As most stars in the Gaia catalogue will have non-negligible fractional parallax errors, we must treat distance estimation as a constrained inference…