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Context: Accurate distance measurements are fundamental to the study of Planetary Nebulae (PNe) but have long been elusive. The most accurate and model-independent distance measurements for galactic PNe come from the trigonometric…
Gravitational waves (GWs) cause the apparent position of distant stars to oscillate with a characteristic pattern on the sky. Astrometric measurements (e.g. those made by Gaia) therefore provide a new way to search for GWs. The main…
LISA might detect gravitational waves from mergers of massive black hole binaries strongly lensed by intervening galaxies (Sereno et al. 2010). The detection of multiple gravitational lensing events would provide a new tool for cosmography.…
Gravitational lensing offers a competitive method to measure $H_0$ with the goal of 1% precision. A major obstacle comes in the form of lensing degeneracies, such as the mass sheet degeneracy (MSD), which make it possible for a family of…
Gaia Data Release 2 (Gaia DR2) provides high accuracy and precision astrometric parameters (position, parallax, and proper motion) for more than 1 billion sources and is revolutionizing astrometry. For a fast-moving target such as an…
Various methods have been proposed to search for extrasolar planets. Compared to the other methods, microlensing has unique applicabilities to the detections of Earth-mass and free-floating planets. However, the microlensing method is…
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…
Here we develop a general statistical procedure for the analysis of finite two-dimensional (2D) patterns inspired by the analysis of heavy-ion data. The method is used in the study of publicly available data obtained by the Gaia-ESA…
Follow the big stars! I review the theory of detection and parameter measurement of planetary systems by follow-up observations of ongoing microlensing events. Two parameters can generically be measured from the event itself: the…
Astrometry is one of the oldest branches of astronomy which measures the position, the proper motion and parallax of celestial objects. Following the Hipparcos and Gaia missions that have measured several billions of them using global…
The MACHO collaboration has been carrying out Difference Image Analysis (DIA) since 1996 with the aim of increasing the sensitivity to the detection of gravitational microlensing. This is a preliminary report on the application of DIA to…
Cosmological parameter constraints from observations of time-delay lenses are becoming increasingly precise. However, there may be significant bias and scatter in these measurements due to, among other things, the so-called mass-sheet…
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…
Aims: An effort has been undertaken to simulate the expected Gaia Catalogue, including the effect of observational errors. A statistical analysis of this simulated Gaia data is performed in order to better understand what can be obtained…
Stellar distances constitute a foundational pillar of astrophysics. The publication of 1.47 billion stellar parallaxes from Gaia is a major contribution to this. Yet despite Gaia's precision, the majority of these stars are so distant or…
To obtain accurate mass measurements for cold planets discovered by microlensing, it is usually necessary to combine light curve modeling with at least two lens mass-distance relations. Often, a constraint on the Einstein ring radius…
We outline a method by which the angular radii of giant and main sequence stars in the Galactic bulge can be measured to a few percent accuracy. The method combines ground-based photometry of caustic-crossing bulge microlensing events, with…
Besides its major objective tuned to the detection of the stellar galactic population the Gaia mission experiment will also observe a large number of galaxies. In this work we intend to evaluate the number and the characteristics of the…
If it is hypothesised that there is no dark matter then some alternative gravitational theory must take the place of general relativity (GR) on the largest scales. Dynamical measurements can be used to investigate the nature of such a…
Thanks to the Gaia mission, it will be possible to determine the masses of approximately hundreds of large main belt asteroids with very good precision. We currently have diameter estimates for all of them that can be used to compute their…