Quasars can be used to verify the parallax zero-point of the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution

Context. The Gaia project will determine positions, proper motions, and parallaxes for more than one billion stars in our Galaxy. It is known that Gaia's two telescopes are affected by a small but significant variation of the basic angle between them. Unless this variation is taken into account during data processing, e.g. using on-board metrology, it causes systematic errors in the astrometric parameters, in particular a shift of the parallax zero-point. Previously, we suggested an early reduction of Gaia data for the subset of Tycho-2 stars (Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution; TGAS). Aims. We aim to investigate whether quasars can be used to independently verify the parallax zero-point already in early data reductions. This is not trivially possible as the observation interval is too short to disentangle parallax and proper motion for the quasar subset. Methods. We repeat TGAS simulations but additionally include simulated Gaia observations of quasars from ground-based surveys. All observations are simulated with basic angle variations. To obtain a full astrometric solution for the quasars in TGAS we explore the use of prior information for their proper motions. Results. It is possible to determine the parallax zero-point for the quasars with a few {\mu}as uncertainty, and it agrees to a similar precision with the zero-point for the Tycho-2 stars. The proposed strategy is robust even for quasars exhibiting significant fictitious proper motion due to a variable source structure, or when the quasar subset is contaminated with stars misidentified as quasars. Conclusions. Using prior information about quasar proper motions we could provide an independent verification of the parallax zero-point in early solutions based on less than one year of Gaia data.Comment: Astronomy & Astrophysics, accepted 25 October 2015, in press. Version 2 contains a few language improvements and a terminology change from 'fictitious proper motions' to 'spurious proper motions

The Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution. How to get 2.5 million parallaxes with less than one year of Gaia data

Context. The first release of astrometric data from Gaia will contain the mean stellar positions and magnitudes from the first year of observations, and proper motions from the combination of Gaia data with Hipparcos prior information (HTPM). Aims. We study the potential of using the positions from the Tycho-2 Catalogue as additional information for a joint solution with early Gaia data. We call this the Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution (TGAS). Methods. We adapt Gaia's Astrometric Global Iterative Solution (AGIS) to incorporate Tycho information, and use simulated Gaia observations to demonstrate the feasibility of TGAS and to estimate its performance. Results. Using six to twelve months of Gaia data, TGAS could deliver positions, parallaxes and annual proper motions for the 2.5 million Tycho-2 stars, with sub-milliarcsecond accuracy. TGAS overcomes some of the limitations of the HTPM project and allows its execution half a year earlier. Furthermore, if the parallaxes from Hipparcos are not incorporated in the solution, they can be used as a consistency check of the TGAS/HTPM solution.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A, 24 Dec 201

Gaia astrometry for stars with too few observations - a Bayesian approach

Gaia's astrometric solution aims to determine at least five parameters for each star, together with appropriate estimates of their uncertainties and correlations. This requires at least five distinct observations per star. In the early data reductions the number of observations may be insufficient for a five-parameter solution, and even after the full mission many stars will remain under-observed, including faint stars at the detection limit and transient objects. In such cases it is reasonable to determine only the two position parameters. Their formal uncertainties would however grossly underestimate the actual errors, due to the neglected parallax and proper motion. We aim to develop a recipe to calculate sensible formal uncertainties that can be used in all cases of under-observed stars. Prior information about the typical ranges of stellar parallaxes and proper motions is incorporated in the astrometric solution by means of Bayes' rule. Numerical simulations based on the Gaia Universe Model Snapshot (GUMS) are used to investigate how the prior influences the actual errors and formal uncertainties when different amounts of Gaia observations are available. We develop a criterion for the optimum choice of priors, apply it to a wide range of cases, and derive a global approximation of the optimum prior as a function of magnitude and galactic coordinates. The feasibility of the Bayesian approach is demonstrated through global astrometric solutions of simulated Gaia observations. With an appropriate prior it is possible to derive sensible positions with realistic error estimates for any number of available observations. Even though this recipe works also for well-observed stars it should not be used where a good five-parameter astrometric solution can be obtained without a prior. Parallaxes and proper motions from a solution using priors are always biased and should not be used.Comment: Revised version, accepted 21st of August 2015 for publication in A&

Improving distances to nearby bright stars: Combining astrometric data from Hipparcos, Nano-JASMINE and Gaia

Starting in 2013, Gaia will deliver highly accurate astrometric data, which eventually will supersede most other stellar catalogues in accuracy and completeness. It is, however, lim- ited to observations from magnitude 6 to 20 and will therefore not include the brightest stars. Nano-JASMINE, an ultrasmall Japanese astrometry satellite, will observe these bright stars, but with much lower accuracy. Hence, the Hipparcos catalogue from 1997 will likely remain the main source of accurate distances to bright nearby stars. We are investigating how this might be improved by optimally combining data from all three missions in a joint astrometric solu- tion. This would take advantage of the unique features of each mission: the historic bright-star measurements of Hipparcos, the updated bright-star observations of Nano-JASMINE, and the very accurate reference frame of Gaia. The long temporal baseline between the missions pro- vides additional benefits for the determination of proper motions and binary detection, which indirectly improve the parallax determination further. We present a quantitative analysis of the expected gains based on simulated data for all three missions.Comment: Final draft for the proceedings of the IAU Symposium 289: Advancing the physics of cosmic distances, held in Beijing, China, August 2012, eds. Richard de Grijs and Giuseppe Bono, Cambridge Univ. Pres

Sense/Drive Architecture for CMOS-MEMS Accelerometers with Relaxation Oscillator and TDC

Postprint (published version

Combining and comparing astrometric data from different epochs: A case study with Hipparcos and Nano-JASMINE

The Hipparcos mission (1989-1993) resulted in the first space-based stellar catalogue including measurements of positions, parallaxes and annual proper motions accurate to about one milli-arcsecond. More space astrometry missions will follow in the near future. The ultra-small Japanese mission Nano-JASMINE (launch in late 2013) will determine positions and annual proper motions with some milli-arcsecond accuracy. In mid 2013 the next-generation ESA mission Gaia will deliver some tens of micro-arcsecond accurate astrometric parameters. Until the final Gaia catalogue is published in early 2020 the best way of improving proper motion values is the combination of positions from different missions separated by long time intervals. Rather than comparing positions from separately reduced catalogues, we propose an optimal method to combine the information from the different data sets by making a joint astrometric solution. This allows to obtain good results even when each data set alone is insufficient for an accurate reduction. We demonstrate our method by combining Hipparcos and simulated Nano-JASMINE data in a joint solution. We show a significant improvement over the conventional catalogue combination.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, 1 table; proceedings of ADASS XXI (Paris, 2011), ASP Conference Serie

Genetic and Biochemical Factors Related to the Risk and Disability Progression in Multiple Sclerosis

Sclerosis multiplex (multiple sclerosis, MS) is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease of the central nervous system. The immune regulatory defects lead to the process of inflammation and neurodegenerationthat results in the deterioration of neurological functions. It is still unclear as to why MS is so devastating and rapidly progressive in one patient and less so in another. It is known that the etiopathogenesis of MS is very complex, and many factors can be involved in the risk and character of the disease and its progression. In this chapter, we discuss the general molecular and cellular mechanisms of action of genetic and biochemical factors that are related to immune system regulation and thus can be connected to the individually varying risk and disability progression of MS. We found that gene variants of the gene polymorphism rs6897932 in interleukin 7 receptor α chain gene rs10735810 in vitamin D receptor gene and HLA-DR and HLA-DQ genes as well as the serum level of vitamin D are associated with MS risk or disability progression in Central European Slovak population

Joint astrometric solution of Hipparcos and Gaia: A recipe for the Hundred Thousand Proper Motions project

The first release of astrometric data from Gaia is expected in 2016. It will contain the mean stellar positions and magnitudes from the first year of observations. For more than 100 000 stars in common with the Hipparcos Catalogue it will be possible to compute very accurate proper motions due to the time difference of about 24 years between the two missions. This Hundred Thousand Proper Motions (HTPM) project will be part of the first release. Our aim is to investigate how early Gaia data can be optimally combined with information from the Hipparcos Catalogue in order to provide the most accurate and reliable results for HTPM. The Astrometric Global Iterative Solution (AGIS) was developed to compute the astrometric core solution based on the Gaia observations and will be used for all releases of astrometric data from Gaia. We adapt AGIS to process Hipparcos data in addition to Gaia observations, and use simulations to verify and study the joint solution method. For the HTPM stars we predict proper motion accuracies between 14 and 134 muas/yr, depending on stellar magnitude and amount of Gaia data available. Perspective effects will be important for a significant number of HTPM stars, and in order to treat these effects accurately we introduce a scaled model of kinematics. We define a goodness-of-fit statistic which is sensitive to deviations from uniform space motion, caused for example by binaries with periods of 10-50 years. HTPM will significantly improve the proper motions of the Hipparcos Catalogue well before highly accurate Gaia- only results become available. Also, HTPM will allow us to detect long period binary and exoplanetary candidates which would be impossible to detect from Gaia data alone. The full sensitivity will not be reached with the first Gaia release but with subsequent data releases. Therefore HTPM should be repeated when more Gaia data become available.Comment: Revised manuscript following referee report. Accepted for publication in A&

The First Dynamical Mass Measurement in the HR 8799 System

HR 8799 hosts four directly imaged giant planets, but none has a mass measured from first principles. We present the first dynamical mass measurement in this planetary system, finding that the innermost planet HR~8799~e has a mass of $9.6^{+1.9}_{-1.8} \, M_{\rm Jup}$. This mass results from combining the well-characterized orbits of all four planets with a new astrometric acceleration detection (5$\sigma$) from the Gaia EDR3 version of the Hipparcos-Gaia Catalog of Accelerations. We find with 95\% confidence that HR~8799~e is below $13\, M_{\rm Jup}$, the deuterium-fusing mass limit. We derive a hot-start cooling age of $42^{+24}_{-16}$\,Myr for HR~8799~e that agrees well with its hypothesized membership in the Columba association but is also consistent with an alternative suggested membership in the $\beta$~Pictoris moving group. We exclude the presence of any additional $\gtrsim$5-$M_{\rm Jup}$ planets interior to HR~8799~e with semi-major axes between $\approx$3-16\,au. We provide proper motion anomalies and a matrix equation to solve for the mass of any of the planets of HR~8799 using only mass ratios between the planets.Comment: Accepted to ApJ Letter

CMOS-MEMS resonant pressure sensors: optimization and validation through comparative analysis

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00542-016-2878-3An optimized CMOS-MEMS resonant pressure sensor with enhanced sensitivity at atmospheric pressure has been reported in this paper. The presented work reports modeling and characterization of a resonant pressure sensor, based on the variation of the quality factor with pressure. The relevant regimes of air flow have been determined by the Knudsen number, which is the ratio of the mean free path of the gas molecule to the characteristic length of the device. The sensitivity has been monitored for the resonator design from low vacuum to atmospheric levels of air pressure. This has been accomplished by reducing the characteristic length and optimization of other parameters for the device. While the existing analytical model has been adapted to simulate the squeeze film damping effectively and it is validated at higher values of air pressure, it fails to compute the structural damping mechanisms dominant in the molecular flow regime, i.e. at lower levels of air pressure. This discrepancy has been solved by finite element modeling that has incorporated both structural and film damping effects. The sensor has been designed with an optimal geometry of 140 × 140 × 8 µm having 6 × 6 perforations along the row and column of the plate, respectively, for maximum Q, with an effective mass of 0.4 µg. An enhanced quality factor of 60 and reduced damping coefficient of 4.34 µNs/m have been obtained for the reported device at atmospheric pressure. The sensitivity of the manufactured device is approximately -0.09 at atmospheric pressure and increases to -0.3 at 40 kPa i.e. in the lower pressures of slip flow regime. The experimental measurements of the manufactured resonant pressure sensor have been compared with that of the analytical and finite element modeling to validate the optimization procedure. The device has been manufactured using standard 250 nm CMOS technology followed by an in-house BEOL metal-layer release through wet etching.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft