Search Publications
New Yarkovsky drift detections using astrometric observations of NEAs
Lisa, Bedini; Giacomo, Tommei
The Yarkovsky drift represents the semi-major axis variation of a celestial body due to the Yarkovsky effect. This thermodynamic effect acts more significantly on bodies with a diameter between ≈10 m and ≈30 km . Therefore, the orbits of many minor bodies of the solar system are affected: knowing the value of the Yarkovsky drift can be crucial to …
Determination of stellar parameters for Ariel targets: a comparison analysis between different spectroscopic methods
Danielski, Camilla; Adibekyan, Vardan; Delgado-Mena, Elisa +9 more
Ariel has been selected as the next ESA M4 science mission and it is expected to be launched in 2028. During its 4-year mission, Ariel will observe the atmospheres of a large and diversified population of transiting exoplanets. A key factor for the achievement of the scientific goal of Ariel is the selection strategy for the definition of the inpu…
Ancillary science with ARIEL: feasibility and scientific potential of young stellar object observations
Morales, J. C.; Ábrahám, P.; Kóspál, Á. +7 more
To investigate the feasibility of ancillary target observations with ESA's ARIEL mission, we compiled a list of potentially interesting young stars: FUors, systems harbouring extreme debris discs and a larger sample of young stellar objects showing strong near/mid-infrared excess. These objects can be observed as additional targets in the waiting …
The CHEOPS mission
Guterman, P.; Alonso, R.; Deleuil, M. +107 more
The CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) was selected on October 19, 2012, as the first small mission (S-mission) in the ESA Science Programme and successfully launched on December 18, 2019, as a secondary passenger on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. CHEOPS is a partnership between ESA and Switzerland with important contri…
All-sky visible and near infrared space astrometry
Tanga, Paolo; Ting, Yuan-Sen; Zwitter, Tomaž +27 more
The era of all-sky space astrometry began with the Hipparcos mission in 1989 and provided the first very accurate catalogue of apparent magnitudes, positions, parallaxes and proper motions of 120 000 bright stars at the milliarcsec (or milliarcsec per year) accuracy level. Hipparcos has now been superseded by the results of the Gaia mission. The s…
Faint objects in motion: the new frontier of high precision astrometry
Villaver, Eva; Alves, João; Chemin, Laurent +83 more
Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high astrometric accuracy is an ideal complement to current astrometric surveys and a unique tool for precision astrophys…
MeerCRAB: MeerLICHT classification of real and bogus transients using deep learning
Paterson, Kerry; Körding, Elmar; Woudt, Patrick +13 more
Astronomers require efficient automated detection and classification pipelines when conducting large-scale surveys of the (optical) sky for variable and transient sources. Such pipelines are fundamentally important, as they permit rapid follow-up and analysis of those detections most likely to be of scientific value. We therefore present a deep le…
Chronos - take the pulse of our galactic neighbourhood
Famaey, Benoit; Katz, David; Haywood, Misha +15 more
Understanding our Galaxy's structure, formation, and evolution will, over the next decades, continue to benefit from the wonderful large survey by Gaia, for astrometric, kinematic, and spectroscopic characterization, and by large spectroscopic surveys for chemical characterization. The weak link for full exploitation of these data is age character…
EREBUS: the EuRopean Extinction BUmp Survey
Shipman, R. F.; Kargl, G.; Skalidis, R. +14 more
Dust in the Interstellar Medium (ISM) is intimately linked to the life cycle of stars. Despite being of such fundamental importance to galaxy evolution, the dynamic behaviour and composition of the ISM are not yet fully understood. Observations of reddened Milky Way OB stars have revealed a strong UV extinction feature around 2175 Å and a precipit…
Perspectives of observing the color indices of optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts with ESA Gaia
Hudec, René; Šimon, Vojtěch; Pizzichini, Graziella
We propose a strategy for detecting and analyzing optical afterglows (OAs) of long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) without the need to obtain their light curves. This approach is useful for the Gaia satellite, which provides sampled optical ultra-low-dispersion spectroscopic observations of the sky. For this purpose, we show that most OAs of long GRBs dis…