Related papers: Micro-arcsecond light bending by Jupiter
The ESA Gaia space astrometry mission will perform an all-sky survey of stellar objects complete in the nominal magnitude range G = [6.0 - 20.0]. The stars with G lower than 6.0, i.e. those visible to the unaided human eye, would thus not…
We review the derivation of the metric for a spinning body of any shape and composition using linearized general relativity theory, and also obtain the same metric using a transformation argument. The latter derivation makes it clear that…
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…
Classical light bending is investigated for weak gravitational fields in the presence of hypothetical local Lorentz violation. Using an effective field theory framework that describes general deviations from local Lorentz invariance, we…
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…
Context: Astrometric gravitational microlensing is an excellent tool to determine the mass of stellar objects. Using precise astrometric measurements of the lensed position of a background source in combination with accurate predictions of…
The recently approved Juno mission will orbit Jupiter for one year in a highly eccentric (r_min=1.06R_Jup, r_max=39R_Jup) polar orbit (i=90 deg) to accurately map, among other things, the jovian magnetic and gravitational fields. Such an…
Since July 2014, the ESA Gaia mission has been surveying the entire sky down to magnitude 20.7 in the visible. In addition to the millions of stars, thousands of Solar System Objects (SSOs) are observed daily. By comparing their positions…
We used the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution catalogue, part of the Gaia Data Release 1, to search for candidate astrometric microlensing events expected to occur within the remaining lifetime of the Gaia satellite. Our search yielded one…
We investigate the deflection of light by a rotating global monopole spacetime and a rotating Letelier spacetime in the weak deflection approximation. To this end, we apply the Gauss-Bonnet theorem to the corresponding osculating optical…
Gaia is a satellite mission of the European Space Agency which is creating a catalogue of extremely accurate positions, distances and space motions of two billion stars in our Galaxy, along with more than one hundred thousand solar system…
We provide a revised assessment of the number of exoplanets that should be discovered by Gaia astrometry, extending previous studies to a broader range of spectral types, distances, and magnitudes. Our assessment is based on a large…
GAIA astrometric mission of ESA will be very efficient in discovering binary and multiple stars with any orbital period, from minutes to millions of years. Main parameters of the revised mission design are presented. Next we estimate the…
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…
Major advancements in space science and detector technology brought about a revolution in global astrometry, the science of measuring distances and motions of stars in the Milky Way and in the local universe. From the first ESA astrometric…
This paper presents the analytical solution of the inverse ray tracing problem for photons emitted by a star and collected by an observer located in the gravitational field of the Solar System. This solution has been conceived to suit the…
General importance and capabilities of observations of eclipsing binaries by the forthcoming ESA mission GAIA are discussed. Availability of spectroscopic observations and a large number of photometric bands on board will make it possible…
The double pulsar system, PSR J0737-3039A/B, is unique in that both neutron stars are detectable as radio pulsars. This, combined with significantly higher mean orbital velocities and accelerations when compared to other binary pulsars,…
Several recent papers have suggested that the cosmological constant Lambda directly influences the gravitational deflection of light. We place this problem in a cosmological context, deriving an expression for the linear potentials which…
Future space astrometry missions are planned to measure positions and/or parallaxes of celestial objects with an accuracy of the order of the microarcsecond. At such a level of accuracy, it will be indispensable to take into account the…