Related papers: Kalkayotl: A cluster distance inference code
Astrometric surveys such as Gaia and LSST will measure parallaxes for hundreds of millions of stars. Yet they will not measure a single distance. Rather, a distance must be estimated from a parallax. In this didactic article, I show that…
Very precise observational data are needed for studying the stellar cluster parameters (distance, reddening, age, metallicity) and cluster internal kinematics. In turn, these give us an insight into the properties of our Galaxy, for…
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…
For the vast majority of stars in the second Gaia data release, reliable distances cannot be obtained by inverting the parallax. A correct inference procedure must instead be used to account for the nonlinearity of the transformation and…
Context. The precise determinations of stellar mass at $\sim$1% provide important constraints on stellar evolution models. Accurate parallax measurements can also serve as independent benchmarks for the next Gaia data release. Aims. We aim…
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…
Context: Star-forming regions, stellar associations, and open clusters are fundamental stellar systems where predictions from star-formation theories can be robustly contrasted with observations. Aims: We aim to provide the astrophysical…
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…
Accurate distances to local molecular clouds are critical for understanding the star and planet formation process, yet distance measurements are often obtained inhomogeneously on a cloud-by-cloud basis. We have recently developed a method…
Converting a noisy parallax measurement into a posterior belief over distance requires inference with a prior. Usually this prior represents beliefs about the stellar density distribution of the Milky Way. However, multi-band photometry…
The precision of the parallax measurements by Gaia is unprecedented. As of Gaia Data Release 2, the number of known nearby open clusters has increased. Some of the clusters appear to be relatively close to each other and form aggregates,…
We have derived accurate distances to Galactic globular clusters by combining data from the Gaia Early Data Release 3 with distances based on Hubble Space telescope HST data and literature based distances. We determine distances either…
Observations of clusters suffer from issues such as completeness, projection effects, resolving individual stars and extinction. As such, how accurate are measurements and conclusions are likely to be? Here, we take cluster simulations…
CONTEXT. The Gaia EDR3 parallaxes constitute the most detailed and accurate dataset that can be currently used to determine stellar distances in the solar neighborhood. Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement in their calibration…
Context: Star clusters, composed of stars born from the same molecular cloud, serve as invaluable natural laboratories for understanding the fundamental processes governing stellar formation and evolution. Aims: This study aims to…
Context. The first Gaia Data Release contains the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS). This is a subset of about 2 million stars for which, besides the position and photometry, the proper motion and parallax are calculated using…
Aims: We provide a new distance estimate for the Pleiades based on the moving cluster method, which will be useful to further discuss the so-called Pleiades distance controversy and compare it with the very precise parallaxes from the Gaia…
Context. The Gaia mission has opened up a new era for the precise astrometry of stars, thus revolutionizing our understanding of the Milky Way. However, beyond a few kiloparseconds from the Sun, parallax measurements become less reliable,…
We infer distances and their asymmetric uncertainties for two million stars using the parallaxes published in the Gaia DR1 (GDR1) catalogue. We do this with two distance priors: A minimalist, isotropic prior assuming an exponentially…
Thanks to the recent wide-area photometric surveys, the number of star cluster candidates have risen exponentially in the last few years. Most detections, however, are based only on the presence of an overdensity of stars in a given region,…