Hipparcos, the New Reduction of the Raw Data

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxx

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2. Introduction to the Hipparcos Mission

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. The Hipparcos Mission

      Pages 3-37

   3. Hipparcos Astrometry

      Pages 39-70

3. Exploring the Hipparcos Astrometric Data

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 71-71

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   2. Individual, Single Stars

      Pages 73-112

   3. The Astrometric Data for Composite Images and Orbital Binaries

      Pages 113-142

   4. Groups of Single Stars

      Pages 143-176

   5. Kinematics of the Solar Neighbourhood

      Pages 177-195

4. A Description of the Contents and Peculiarities of the Hipparcos Photometric Data

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 197-197

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   2. The Photometric Data

      Pages 199-215

5. Hipparcos Attitude Modelling

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 217-217

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   2. A Free-Floating Rigid Body in Space

      Pages 219-237

   3. The Torques on Hipparcos As Observed Over the Mission

      Pages 239-253

   4. Fully-Dynamic Attitude Fitting

      Pages 255-283

6. Summary of Selected Spacecraft and Payload Calibration Results

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 285-285

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   2. The Mission Timeline

      Pages 287-298

   3. Payload Calibrations

      Pages 299-327

   4. Spacecraft-Parameter Calibrations

      Pages 329-345

7. The Next Generation

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 347-347

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Thepublication oftheHipparcos andTycho Catalogues in 1997 transformed astrometry, and as a consequence astronomers’ perception of astrometry. What had before often been regarded as a somewhat quaint specialty of limited re- vance to modern astrophysics, was suddenly seen to produce a wealth of data of immediate practical use. The ready availability of many thousand precise trigonometric stellar distances and the access to an accurate and dense - tical reference frame have changed the way astronomers think about certain problems and plan their experiments. Inevitably, the exploitation of so much new data not only solved some old problems, tidied up several confused areas and sharpened many observational constraints, but it also generated new qu- tions about established theory – and about the data themselves. The author of this book has taken a radical approach to answer some of these questions: a complete re-examination of the satellite data and the models used to represent them, in particular the attitude modelling. Eventually this resulted in the new and very signi?cantly improved Hipparcos reduction described in this book. This remarkable achievement was made possible by a combination of many factors, including time and the exponential growth of computing power, but mainly an incredible amount of detailed, tedious and ingenious work by the author and the resulting insight into what really went on with the satellite in its unhappy orbit. Dr.

• ACE
• Astrometry
• Hipparcos data reduction
• Rigid body
• Satellite Dynamics
• space astrometry
• star
• stellar parallaxes

From the reviews:

"For astronomers, ‘Hipparcos - The New Reduction of the Raw Data’ promises to open up a new chapter in the study of the age, size and properties of stars, helping them to tackle fundamental questions about the origins of the universe with greater precision than before. … In some cases, its contents are up to five times more accurate than the previous guide, offering scholars what in astronomical terms is the closest they can get to pinpoint accuracy." (John Rowlands, www.physorg.com, September, 2007)

• Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

  Floor Leeuwen

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