Related papers: Lost in space? Relativistic interstellar navigatio…
The trajectory of an interplanetary spacecraft can be used to test gravitation in the Solar System. Its determination relies on radio tracking and is limited by the uncertainty on the spacecraft non-gravitational acceleration. The addition…
Stellar Doppler velocimetry determines a star's radial velocity $v_r$ via measurement of a redshift, $z$. At precisions below 10 m s$^{-1}$ conversion between the two quantities is complex, and care must be taken to properly account for the…
Given the extreme accuracy reached by future global space astrometry, one needs a global relativistic modeling of observations. A relativistic definition of astrometric observables is then essential to find uniquely coordinates, parallax…
For more than fifty years, astronomers have mapped the neutral hydrogen gas in the Galaxy assuming kinematically derived distances. We employ the distances of nearby young stars, which trace the gas from which they formed, in…
Distance measurements are fundamental to radio pulsars' use as astrophysical probes of General Relativity and the interstellar medium. One of the primary methods for determining pulsar distances is HI kinematics, which leverages the radial…
Two motions in the galactic plane have been detected and characterized, based on the determination of a common systematic component in Hipparcos catalogue proper motions. The procedure is based only on positions, proper motions and…
We present a navigation concept for solving the lost in space and time problem using optical observations of $\delta$ Scuti variable stars. Only a small number of techniques exist that allow a spacecraft to recover from being lost in both…
We aim to explain the paradigm of a learning model, as well as to validate it in an applied case of an astronomy problem where the data used are declination, parallax, radial velocity of a star, as well as its annual variation in right…
The galaxy distributions along the line-of-sight are significantly contaminated by the uncertainty on redshift measurements obtained through multiband photometry, which makes it difficult to get cosmic distance information measured from…
We describe the astrometric reduction of images obtained with the FORS2/VLT camera in the framework of an astrometric planet search around 20 M/L-transition dwarfs. We present the correction of systematic errors, the achieved astrometric…
I present three methods to determine the distance to the Galactic centre R0, the solar azimuthal velocity in the Galactic rest frame Vg,\odot and hence the local circular speed Vc at R0. These simple, model-independent strategies reduce the…
In this work we present the first results from a new ray-tracing tool to calculate cosmological distances in the context of fully nonlinear general relativity. We use this tool to study the ability of the general cosmographic representation…
Starting from the observed distribution of galaxy clusters in redshift space we use a two--step procedure to recover their distances and peculiar velocities. After statistically correcting for the unobserved cluster distribution in the zone…
We propose AstroSLAM, a standalone vision-based solution for autonomous online navigation around an unknown target small celestial body. AstroSLAM is predicated on the formulation of the SLAM problem as an incrementally growing factor…
Orbit determination of spacecraft in orbit has been mostly dependent on either GNSS satellite signals or ground station telemetry. Both methods present their limitations, however: GNSS signals can only be used effectively in earth orbit,…
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) visual localization in planetary aims to estimate the absolute pose of the UAV in the world coordinate system through satellite maps and images captured by on-board cameras. However, since planetary scenes…
Optical interferometry provides us with a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of stellar structure and evolution. Through direct observation of rotationally distorted photospheres at sub-milliarcsecond scales, we are now able to…
As demonstrated with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), Pan-STARRS, and most recently with Gaia data, broadband near-UV to near-IR stellar photometry can be used to estimate distance, metallicity, and interstellar dust extinction along…
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…
Searching for extrasolar planets by direct detection is extremely challenging for current instrumentation. Indirect methods, that measure the effect of a planet on its host star, are much more promising and have indeed led to the discovery…