Related papers: Around the Pleiades
Distances to stars are key to revealing a three-dimensional view of the Milky Way, yet their determination is a major challenge in astronomy. Whilst the brightest nearby stars benefit from direct parallax measurements, fainter stars are…
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…
Classical Cepheids provide the foundation for the empirical extragalactic distance ladder. Milky Way Cepheids are the only stars in this class accessible to trigonometric parallax measurements. However, the parallaxes of Cepheids from the…
Gaia DR2 5932173855446728064 was recently proposed to be unbound from the Milky Way based on the $-614.3\pm2.5\;\mathrm{km}\;\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ median radial velocity given in Gaia DR2. We obtained eight epochs of spectroscopic follow-up and…
We review the current status of classical Cepheid and RR Lyrae distance scales. We discuss the most recent theoretical and empirical findings together with pros and cons of different methods. The use of Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars as…
Many open clusters listed in modern catalogues were initially reported by visual astronomers as apparent overdensities of bright stars. As observational techniques and analysis methods continue to improve, some of them have been shown to be…
We present a revised distance to the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant of $725\pm15$ pc based on Gaia Early Data Release 3 parallax measurements (EDR3) for several stars previously found to be located either inside or behind the supernova based…
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the accuracy of our knowledge of close stellar passage distances in the pre-GAIA era.We used the most precise astrometric and kinematic data available at the moment and prepared a list of 40 stars…
The determination of accurate distances to star-forming regions are discussed in the broader historical context of astronomical distance measurements. We summarize recent results for regions within 1 kpc and present perspectives for the…
We describe the information that can be gained when a survey is done multi-epoch, and its particular impact for open clusters. We first explain the irreplaceable information that multi-epoch observations are giving within astrometry,…
We report the discovery of 25 new open clusters resulting from a search in dense low galactic latitude fields. We also provide, for the first time, structural and astrophysical parameters for the new findings and 34 other recently…
Classical Cepheids are the most important primary indicators for the extragalactic distance scale. Establishing the precise zero points of their Period-Luminosity and Period-Wesenheit (PL/PW) relations has profound consequences on the…
I present a catalog of distances to 63 molecular clouds located within ~2.5 kpc of the Sun. The cloud distances are derived based on utilizing the Gaia DR3 parallaxes of the young stellar objects (YSOs). By identifying AllWISE YSO…
We reprise the analysis of Stassun & Torres (2016), comparing the parallaxes of the eclipsing binaries reported in that paper to the parallaxes newly reported in the Gaia second data release (DR2). We find evidence for a systematic offset…
Our scientific goal is to provide a 3D map of the nearest open cluster to the Sun, the Hyades, combining the recent release of Gaia astrometric data, ground-based parallaxes of sub-stellar member candidates and photometric data from surveys…
We present the second Gaia data release, Gaia DR2, consisting of astrometry, photometry, radial velocities, and information on astrophysical parameters and variability, for sources brighter than magnitude 21. In addition epoch astrometry…
We report on a first census of Galactic black hole X-ray binary (BHXRB) properties with the second data release (DR2) of {\em Gaia}, focusing on dynamically confirmed and strong candidate black hole transients. DR2 provides five-parameter…
We derive the distance and structure of the Perseus molecular cloud by combining trigonometric parallaxes from Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations, taken as part of the GOBELINS survey, and Gaia Data Release 2. Based on our VLBA…
The global survey of star clusters in the Milky Way (MWSC) is a comprehensive list of 3061 objects that provides, among other parameters, distances to clusters based on isochrone fitting. The Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS)…
Context. Although the Gaia catalogue on its own is a very powerful tool, it is the combination of this high-accuracy archive with other archives that will truly open up amazing possibilities for astronomical research. The advanced…