Related papers: A Demonstration of Interstellar Navigation Using N…
The detection of low-mass planets orbiting the nearest stars is a central stake of exoplanetary science, as they can be directly characterized much more easily than their distant counterparts. Here, we present the results of our long-term…
Precision measurements of the stars in short-period orbits around the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center are now being used to constrain general relativistic effects, such as the gravitational redshift and periapse precession.…
We present the first high-precision proper motion catalog, tied to the International Celestial Reference System (ICRS), of infrared astrometric reference stars within R $\leq$ 25" (1 pc) of the central supermassive black hole at the…
Recent technological advances could make interstellar travel possible, using ultra-lightweight sails pushed by lasers or solar photon pressure, at speeds of a few percent the speed of light. Obtaining remote observational data from such…
We present an approach for utilizing astrometric orbit information to improve the yield of planetary images and spectra from a follow-on direct detection mission. This approach is based on the notion-strictly hypothetical-that if a…
In 2012, Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, becoming the first human-made object to exit the solar system. This milestone signifies the beginning of an important new era for local interstellar medium (LISM) exploration. We present…
The extrasolar planetary system around HR 8799 is the first multiplanet system ever imaged. It is also, by a wide margin, the highest mass system with >27 Jupiters of planetary mass past 25 AU. This is a remarkable system with no analogue…
We have selected a set of 17 visual binaries that demonstrate great inconsistency between the systemic mass obtained through Kepler's Third Law as compared to that calculated through standard mass-luminosity and mass-spectrum relationships.…
In this paper, we propose novel methods to increase total luminosity and decrease error propagation during subluminal or luminal interstellar transits by navigation with star maps. We demonstrate with theoretical and simulation models in…
Between 1997 and 2004 several observing runs were conducted mainly with the CTIO 0.9 m to image ICRF counterparts (mostly QSOs) in order to determine accurate optical positions. Contemporary to these deep CCD images the same fields were…
We tackle the problem of accurate optical tracking of distant man-made probes, on Halo orbit around the Earth-Sun libration point L2 and beyond, along interplanetary transfers. The improved performance of on-target tracking, especially when…
Many transiting planet host stars lack high resolution imaging and thus close stellar sources can be missed. Those unknown stars potentially bias the derivation of the planetary and stellar parameters from the transit light curve, no matter…
Accurate distances are fundamental to interpreting many measured properties of galaxies. Surprisingly, many of the best-studied spiral galaxies in the Local Volume have distance uncertainties that are much larger than can be achieved with…
Future missions like Roman, HabEx, and LUVOIR will directly image exoplanets in reflected light. While current near infrared direct imaging searches are only sensitive to young, self-luminous planets whose brightness is independent of their…
In Yoshii et al. (2014), we described a new method for measuring extragalactic distances based on dust reverberation in active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and we validated our new method with Cepheid variable stars. In this paper, we validate…
The current direct observations of brown dwarfs and exoplanets have been obtained using instruments not specifically designed for overcoming the large contrast ratio between the host star and any wide-separation faint companions. However,…
The next generation of exoplanet space photometry missions proposed by both NASA and ESA promise to discover small transiting planets around the nearest and brightest main-sequence stars. The physical and rotational properties of these…
Context. The Kepler space mission led to a large amount of high-precision time series of solar-like oscillators. Using a Bayesian analysis that combines asteroseismic techniques and additional ground-based observations, the mass, radius,…
Probability density functions are determined from new stellar parameters for the distance moduli of stars for which the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) has obtained spectra with S/N>=10. Single-Gaussian fits to the pdf in distance modulus…
We aim to search for satellites and circumplanetary or circumsubstellar disks around directly imaged substellar companions, exploring their immediate environment to constrain the conditions for satellites and disk formation. We conducted a…