Related papers: Interplanetary Laser Tri-lateration Network: simul…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) measurements are crucial for advanced exploration of the laws of fundamental gravitational physics and geophysics. Current LLR technology allows us to measure distances to the Moon with a precision approaching 1…
As the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) fulfills its primary mission it is executing an unprecedented all-sky survey with the potential to discover distant planets in our own solar system, as well as hundreds of…
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…
Neutron stars provide a compelling testing ground for gravity, nuclear dynamics, and physics beyond the Standard Model, and so it will be useful to locate the neutron stars nearest to Earth. To that end, we revisit pulsar distance estimates…
The latest version of the planetary ephemerides developed at the Paris Observatory and at the Besancon Observatory is presented here. INPOP08 is a 4-dimension ephemeris since it provides to users positions and velocities of planets and the…
Observations of interplanetary scintillation (IPS - the scintillation of compact radio sources due to density variations in the solar wind) enable the velocity of the solar wind to be determined, and its bulk density to be estimated,…
We recognize the need for the characterization of exoplanets in reflected light in the visible and in the IR termal emission. But for the thermal infrared we also recognize the difficulty of an interferometric nuller We nevertheless endorse…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information regarding the internal structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the low-periastron distance regime due to the bias…
We review the state of the art in follow-up photometry for planetary transit searches. Three topics are discussed: (1) Photometric monitoring of planets discovered by radial velocity to detect possible transits (2) Follow-up photometry of…
The quest for other habitable worlds and the search for life among them are major goals of modern astronomy. One way to make progress towards these goals is to obtain high-quality spectra of a large number of exoplanets over a broad range…
The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) recently measured the mass and equatorial radius of the isolated neutron star PSR J0030+0451. We use these measurements to infer the moment of inertia, the quadrupole moment, and the…
Multiple low-Earth orbit satellite constellations, aimed at beaming broadband connectivity from space, are currently under active deployment. While such space-based Internet is set to augment, globally, today's terrestrial connectivity, and…
The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) is a strategic instrument of the LBT designed for high-sensitivity, high-contrast, and high-resolution infrared (1.5-13 $\mu$m) imaging of nearby planetary systems. To carry out a wide…
Recent theoretical works on alternative metric theories of gravity give greater significance to solar-system tests of General Relativity. In particular, it is suggested that the post-Newtonian parameter $\gamma$ ought to be determined with…
The Interplanetary Network (IPN) is a detection, localization and alert system that utilizes the arrival time of transient signals in gamma-ray detectors on spacecraft separated by planetary baselines to geometrically locate the origin of…
We have designed an inquiry-based laboratory activity on transiting extrasolar planets for an introductory college-level astronomy class. The activity was designed with the intent of simultaneously teaching science process skills and…
We demonstrate that microlensing can be used for detecting planets in binary stellar systems. This is possible because in the geometry of planetary binary systems where the planet orbits one of the binary component and the other binary star…
We propose a new kind of interferometric array that yields images of high dynamic range and large field. The numerous individual apertures in this array form a pattern related to a Fresnel zone plate. This array can be used for…
The new approach of the regular spacing of planetary orbits and planet mass distribution in the Solar system is considered. The relative planetary distances will be represented as the inverse composite probabilities of two discrete…