Related papers: Astrometric detection of exoplanets
Context: With no conclusive detection to date, the search for exomoons, satellites of planets orbiting other stars, remains a formidable challenge. Detecting these objects, compiling a population-level sample and constraining their…
Astrometry from space has unique advantages over ground-based observations: the all-sky coverage, relatively stable, and temperature and gravity invariant operating environment delivers precision, accuracy and sample volume several orders…
Absolute astrometry with Gaia is expected to detect and characterize the orbits of thousands of exoplanets in the coming years. A tool, GaiaPMEX, was recently developed to characterize multiple systems based on Gaia-only data, and, when…
Direct imaging searches for exoplanets around stars detect many spurious candidates that are in fact background field stars. To help distinguish these from genuine companions, multi-epoch astrometry can be used to identify a common proper…
Since its launch in 2013, the Gaia space telescope has provided precise measurements of the positions and magnitudes of over 1 billion stars. This has enabled extensive searches for stellar and sub-stellar companions through astrometric and…
Gaia will observe more than one billion objects brighter than V=20, including stars, asteroids, galaxies and quasars. As Gaia performs real time detection (i.e. without an input catalogue) the intrinsic properties of most of these objects…
The holy grail of exoplanet searches is an exo-Earth, an Earth mass planet in the habitable zone around a nearby star. Mass is the most important parameter of a planet and can only be measured by observing the motion of the star around the…
Distant objects in the solar system are crucial to better understand the history and evolution of its outskirts. The stellar occultation technique allows the determination of their sizes and shapes with kilometric accuracy, a detailed…
With the advent of optical interferometers that will be coming online in the next decade, radial velocity searches for extra-solar planets will be complemented by high angular resolution astrometric measurements. In this paper, we explore…
The ESA Cornerstone Mission GAIA, to be launched prior to 2012 and with a nominal lifetime of 5 years, will improve the accuracy of Hipparcos astrometry by more than two orders of magnitude. GAIA high-precision global astrometric…
Gaia is an astrometric mission that will be launched in 2013 and set on L2 point of Lagrange. It will observe a large number of Solar System Objets (SSO) down to magnitude 20. The Solar System Science goal is to map thousand of Main Belt…
Access to microarcsecond astrometry is now routine in the radio, infrared, and optical domains. In particular the publication of the second data release from the Gaia mission made it possible for every astronomer to work with easily…
We re-examine the expected yield of Gaia astrometric planet detections using updated models for giant-planet occurrence, the local stellar population, and Gaia's demonstrated astrometric precision. Our analysis combines a semi-analytic…
Space astrometry is capable of sub-microarcsecond measurements of star positions. A hundred visits over several years could yield relative astrometric precision of ~0.1 uas, below the astrometric signature (0.3 uas) of a Sun-Earth system at…
The exoplanet detection is the most exciting and challenging field of astronomy. The discovery of many exoplanets has revolutionized our understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary systems and has showed new ways to search for…
We use detailed numerical simulations and the $\upsilon$ Andromedae, planetary system as a template to evaluate the capability of the ESA Cornerstone Mission GAIA in detecting and measuring multiple planets around solar-type stars in the…
Because of the recent technological advances, the key technologies needed for precision space optical astrometry are now in hand. The Microarcsecond Astrometry Probe (MAP) mission concept is designed to find 1 Earth mass planets at 1AU…
The measurement of the positions, distances, motions and luminosities of stars represents the foundations of modern astronomical knowledge. Launched at the end of the eighties, the ESA Hipparcos satellite was the first space mission…
Gaia is a fully-approved all-sky astrometric and photometric survey due for launch in 2011. It will measure accurate parallaxes and proper motions for everything brighter than G=20 (ca. 10^9 stars). Its primary objective is to study the…
In its all-sky survey, Gaia will monitor astrometrically and photometrically millions of main-sequence stars with sufficient sensitivity to brown dwarf companions within a few AUs from their host stars and to transiting brown dwarfs on very…