Related papers: Cosmology with the Very Large Telescope Interferom…
Space interferometry is the inevitable endpoint of high angular resolution astrophysics, and a key technology that can be leveraged to analyse exoplanet formation and atmospheres with exceptional detail. However, the anticipated cost of…
I review the astrophysical insights arising from high-precision astrometric observations of X-ray binary systems, focussing primarily (but not exclusively) on recent results with very long baseline interferometry. Accurate,…
This tutorial gives a general introduction to optical and infrared interferometry, specifically addressing two questions: `Can I use VLTI to observe my favourite object?' and `What will it tell me?' The observables measured by an…
Weak gravitational lensing surveys measure the distortion of the image of distant sources due to the deflections of light rays by the fluctuations of the gravitational potential along the line of sight. Since they probe the non-linear…
Cosmography is a phenomenological and relatively model-independent approach to cosmology, where physical quantities are expanded as a Taylor series in the cosmological redshift, or in related variables. Here we apply this methodology to…
Interferometry is a powerful technique for making sensitive, high-fidelity images of the sky, but is limited in its ability to measure extended or diffuse emission. Better images of extended astronomical objects can be obtained by…
VLT-Interferometry will allow imaging of the Galactic Center (GC) and the nuclei of extragalactic sources at an angular resolution of a few milliarcseconds. VLTI will be a prime instrument to study the immediate environment of the massive…
It is argued that it is far more cost effective to carry out some projects with medium-sized dedicated zenith telescopes rather than large steerable telescopes, freeing the later to carry out projects that truly need them. I show that the…
We present feasibility studies to directly image stellar surface features, which are caused by magnetic activity, with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). We concentrate on late type magnetically active stars, for which the…
Finding a suitable very long baseline (VLBI) interferometer geometry is a key task in planning observations, especially imaging sessions. The main characteristic of the quality of VLBI imaging data is the (u, v)-coverage. In the case when…
The accuracy of astrometric observations conducted via a space-borne optical interferometer orbiting the Earth is expected to approach a few microarcseconds. Data processing of such extremely high-precision measurements requires access to a…
Infrared interferometry has seen a revolution over the last few years. The advent of GRAVITY+ is about to enable high-contrast observations, all-sky coverage and faint science up to K=21, with the implementation on 8m-class telescope of…
The conventional approach to high-precision narrow-angle astrometry using a long baseline interferometer is to directly measure the fringe packet separation of a target and a nearby reference star. This is done by means of a technique known…
The detection and characterisation of extra-solar planets is a major theme driving modern astronomy, with the vast majority of such measurements being achieved by Doppler radial-velocity and transit observations. Another technique -- direct…
Many features of the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) contrive to make it the best telescope for pulsar astrometry. The measured proper motions and parallaxes allow distances and transverse velocities to be determined. These in turn provide…
The gravitational microlensing as a unique astrophysical tool can be used for studying the atmosphere of stars thousands of parsec far from us. This capability results from the bending of light rays in the gravitational field of a lens…
We present the results of PSR$\pi$, a large astrometric project targeting radio pulsars using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). From our astrometric database of 60 pulsars, we have obtained parallax-based distance measurements for all…
A modified version of the folded aplanatic Gregory telescope equipped with a spherical two-lens corrector is proposed for observations requiring a high signal-to-noise ratio. The basic telescope model has an aperture of 400 mm (f/3.0), its…
WFIRST microlensing observations will return high-precision parallaxes, sigma(pi) < 0.3 microarcsec, for the roughly 1 million stars with H<14 in its 2.8 deg^2 field toward the Galactic bulge. Combined with its 40,000 epochs of high…
We conduct a thorough study into the feasibility of measuring large-scale correlated proper motions of galaxies with astrometric surveys. We introduce a harmonic formalism for analysing proper motions and their correlation functions on the…