Related papers: Microlens Parallaxes with SIRTF
Astrometric surveys such as Gaia and LSST will measure parallaxes for hundreds of millions of stars. Yet they will not measure a single distance. Rather, a distance must be estimated from a parallax. In this didactic article, I show that…
We report final results from our 2.5 year infrared parallax program carried out with the European Southern Observatory 3.5m New Technology Telescope and the SOFI infrared camera. Our program targeted precision astrometric observations of…
The gravitational fields of astrophysical bodies bend the light around them, creating multiple paths along which light from a distant source can arrive at Earth. Measuring the difference in photon arrival time along these different paths…
In this article, we have investigated the possibility to distinguish between different galactic models through the microlensing parallax studies. We show that a systematic search for parallax effects can be done using the currently running…
Augmenting the \emph{WFIRST} microlensing campaigns with intensive observations from a ground-based network of wide-field survey telescopes would have several major advantages. First, it would enable full two-dimensional (2-D) vector…
We combine Spitzer and ground-based observations to measure the microlens parallax vector ${\mathbf \pi}_{\rm E}$, and so the mass and distance of OGLE-2014-BLG-0124L, making it the first microlensing planetary system with a space-based…
We examine the prospects for measurement of the Hubble parameter $H_0$ via observation of the secular parallax of other galaxies due to our own motion relative to the cosmic microwave background rest frame. Peculiar velocities make distance…
In this paper, we demonstrate the severity of the degeneracy between the microlens-parallax and lens-orbital effects by presenting the analysis of the gravitational binary-lens event OGLE-2015-BLG-0768. Despite the obvious deviation from…
We present a combined analysis of the observations of the gravitational microlensing event OGLE-2015-BLG-0479 taken both from the ground and by the {\it Spitzer Space Telescope}. The light curves seen from the ground and from space exhibit…
We report the lens mass and distance measurements of the nearby microlensing event TCP J05074264+2447555. We measure the microlens parallax vector ${\pi}_{\rm E}$ using Spitzer and ground-based light curves with constraints on the direction…
The Weizmann Fast Astronomical Survey Telescope (W-FAST) is a 55cm optical survey telescope with a high cadence (25Hz) monitoring of the sky over a wide field of view (~7deg^2). The high frame rate allows detection of sub-second transients…
We assess the impact of satellite glints -- rapid flashes produced by reflections of a sunlight from flat surfaces of rotating satellites -- on current and future deep sky surveys such as the ones conducted by the Zwicky Transient Facility…
Estimating a distance by inverting a parallax is only valid in the absence of noise. As most stars in the Gaia catalogue will have non-negligible fractional parallax errors, we must treat distance estimation as a constrained inference…
Astrometric observations of microlensing events were originally proposed to determine the lens proper motion with which the physical parameters of lenses can be better constrained. In this proceeding, we demonstrate that besides this…
The microlensing parallax campaign with the $Spitzer$ space telescope aims to measure masses and distances of microlensing events seen towards the Galactic bulge, with a focus on planetary microlensing events. The hope is to measure how the…
The Earth's atmospheric turbulence degrades the precision of ground-based astrometry. Here, we discuss these limitations and propose that, with proper treatment of systematics and by leveraging the many epochs available from the Korean…
This article describes a parallax experiment performed by undergraduate physics students at Queensland University of Technology. The experiment is analogous to the parallax method used in astronomy to measure distances to the local stars.…
Simultaneous observations from two spatially well-separated telescopes can lead to the measurements of the microlensing parallax parameter, an important quantity toward the determinations of the lens mass. The separation between Earth and…
Recent observations of surface brightness distributions of both Milky Way and M31 satellite galaxies have revealed many instances of sudden changes or breaks in the slope of the surface brightness profiles (at some break radius, r_break).…
We apply the statistical methods by Schoenrich, Binney & Asplund to assess the quality of distances and kinematics in the RAVE-TGAS and LAMOST-TGAS samples of Solar neighbourhood stars. These methods yield a nominal distance accuracy of…