Related papers: The Case for a Large-Scale Occultation Network
The ESA Euclid mission will survey more than 14,000 deg$^2$ of the sky in visible and near-infrared wavelengths, mapping the extra-galactic sky to constrain our cosmological model of the Universe. Although the survey focusses on regions…
We used the 8 June 2004 transit of Venus (ToV) as a surrogate to test observing methods, strategies and techniques that are being contemplated for future space missions to detect and characterize extrasolar terrestrial planets (ETPs) as…
The Gaia satellite, planned for launch by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2013, is the next generation astrometry mission following Hipparcos. Gaia's primary science goal is to determine the kinematics, chemical structure and evolution…
The GBOT group is in charge of the Ground Based Optical Tracking of the Gaia satellite. In concrete terms, since the launch of Gaia, our task is to take every night, using ground based medium-class telescopes, short sequences of $10$ or…
In recent years there appeared a need for astronomical observations timed with sub-millisecond accuracy. These include e.g. timing stellar occultations by small, sub-km or fast Near Earth Asteroids, but also tracking artificial satellites…
Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) are thought to be the remnant of the early solar system, and their size distribution provides an opportunity to explore the formation and evolution of the outer solar system. In particular, the size distribution…
Both ground and space-based transit observatories are poised to significantly increase the number of known transiting planets and the number of precisely measured transit times. The variation in a planet's transit times may be used to infer…
Compared with previous space-borne surveys, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) provides a unique and new approach to observe Solar System objects. While its primary mission avoids the vicinity of the ecliptic plane by…
Even from a light polluted city it is possible to observe Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) at opposition using a small telescope equipped with a CCD camera. In this paper, we will overview first the major NEA programs, continuing with planning…
We demonstrate that gravitational lensing can be used to discover and study planets in the habitable zones of nearby dwarf stars. If appropriate software is developed, a new generation of monitoring programs will automatically conduct a…
Scope of this contribution is twofold. First, it describes the potential of the global astrometry mission Gaia for detecting and measuring planetary systems based on detailed double-blind mode simulations and on the most recent predictions…
Gravitational microlensing is one of the methods to detect exoplanets; planets outside our solar system. Here we focus on theoretical modeling of three lens systems and in particular circumbinary systems. Circumbinary systems include two…
Most known trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) gravitationally scattering off the giant planets have orbital inclinations consistent with an origin from the classical Kuiper belt, but a small fraction of these "scattering TNOs" have inclinations…
The detectors designed for Gaia, the next ESA space astrometry mission to be launched in 2011, will allow to observe repeatedly stars very close to Jupiter's limb. This will open a unique opportunity to test General Relativity by performing…
Since July 2014, the ESA Gaia mission has been surveying the entire sky down to magnitude 20.7 in the visible. In addition to the millions of stars, thousands of Solar System Objects (SSOs) are observed daily. By comparing their positions…
Detections of transiting planets from the upcoming PLATO mission are expected to face significant contamination from contaminating eclipsing binaries, resulting in false positives. To counter this, a ground-based programme to acquire…
We investigate constraints on additional planets orbiting the distant M-dwarf star OGLE-2005-BLG-390L, around which photometric microlensing data has revealed the existence of the sub-Neptune-mass planet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb. We specifically…
A stellar occultation by Neptune's main satellite, Triton, was observed on 5 October 2017 from Europe, North Africa, and the USA. We derived 90 light curves from this event, 42 of which yielded a central flash detection. We aimed at…
We report the discovery of a several-Jupiter mass planetary companion to the primary lens star in microlensing event OGLE-2005-BLG-071. Precise (<1%) photometry at the peak of the event yields an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio…
High contrast direct imaging of exoplanets can provide many important observables, including measurements of the orbit, spectra that probe the lower layers of the atmosphere, and phase variations of the planet, but cannot directly measure…