Related papers: Astrometry history: Hipparcos from 1964 to 1980
The satellite missions Hipparcos and Gaia by the European Space Agency will together bring a decrease of astrometric errors by a factor 10000, four orders of magnitude, more than was achieved during the preceding 500 years. This modern…
Astrometry, the most ancient branch of astronomy, was facing extinction during much of the 20th century in the competition with astrophysics. The revival of astrometry came with the European astrometry satellite Hipparcos, approved by ESA…
The Hipparcos satellite was launched in 1989. It was the first, and remains to date the only, attempt at performing large-scale astrometric measurements from space. Hipparcos marked a fundamentally new approach to the field of astrometry,…
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 great development of astrometric accuracy since the observations by Hipparchus about 150 BC was documented in 2008 in the first version of the present report. This report was updated in H{\o}g (2017d), e.g. with recent information on…
Astrophysical studies require a knowledge of very accurate positions, motions and distances of stars. A brief overview is given of the significance and development of astrometry by ESA's two astrometric satellites, Hipparcos and Gaia,…
In 1953 I heard of an experiment in 1925 by Bengt Str\"omgren where he observed transit times with the meridian circle at the Copenhagen University Observatory measuring the current in a photocell behind slits when a star was crossing. In…
The history of astrometry, the branch of astronomy dealing with the positions of celestial objects, is a lengthy and complex chronicle, having its origins in the earliest records of astronomical observations more than two thousand years…
Hipparcos, the first ever experiment of global astrometry, was launched by ESA in 1989 and its results published in 1997 (Perryman et al., Astron. Astrophys. 323, L49, 1997; Perryman & ESA (eds), The Hipparcos and Tycho catalogues, ESA…
The measurement of the positions, distances, motions and luminosities of stars represents the foundations of modern astronomical knowledge. Launched at the end of the eighties, the ESA Hipparcos satellite was the first space mission…
The aim is to document in some detail the last 35 years of meridian circles, a type of instrument with a fundamental role in astronomy for a very long time, and to do so while witnesses are still alive and can contribute. This is about…
Michael Perryman has interviewed some of the scientists and project leaders in the Hipparcos and Gaia missions, the interviews with photos of the persons are given at his site: https://www.michaelperryman.co.uk . Michael has also written…
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…
Major advancements in space science and detector technology brought about a revolution in global astrometry, the science of measuring distances and motions of stars in the Milky Way and in the local universe. From the first ESA astrometric…
As the title of this symposium implies, one of the aims is to examine the future of astrometry as we move from an era in which thanks to the Hipparcos Catalogue everyone has become familiar with milliarcsecond astrometry to an era in which…
The Hipparcos Intermediate Astrometric Data have been used lately to estimate the inclination of the orbital plane of candidate extrasolar planets. Whereas most of these investigations derive almost face-on orbits, we show that the…
During the last decade, the understanding of fine features of the structure and evolution of stars has become possible as a result of enormous progress made in the acquisition of high-quality observational and experimental data and of new…
The Baltic meetings of astronomers from Northern Germany and Scandinavia began in 1957 and gathered up to 70 participants. Reports of the presentations are available from all meetings, providing an overview of the interests of astronomers…
The great development of astrometric accuracy since the observations by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus about 150 BC has often been displayed in diagrams showing the accuracy versus time. Two new diagrams are provided here, one for…
This is a personal account of how I became an astronomer. Fascinated by the stars and planets in the dark sky over Lolland, an island 100 km south of Copenhagen, the interest in astronomy was growing. Encouraged by my teachers, I polished…