High-precision astrometry towards ELTs

Davide Massari, Giuliana Fiorentino, Eline Tolstoy, Alan McConnachie, Remko Stuik, Laura Schreiber, David Andersen, Yann Clénet, Richard Davies, Damien Gratadour, Konrad Kuijken, Ramon Navarro, Jörg-Uwe Pott, Gabriele Rodeghiero, Paolo Turri, Gijs Verdoes Kleijn

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademic

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

With the aim of paving the road for future accurate astrometry with MICADO at the European-ELT, we performed an astrometric study using two different but complementary approaches to investigate two critical components that contribute to the total astrometric accuracy. First, we tested the predicted improvement in the astrometric measurements with the use of an atmospheric dispersion corrector (ADC) by simulating realistic images of a crowded Galactic globular cluster. We found that the positional measurement accuracy should be improved by up to 2 mas with the ADC, making this component fundamental for high-precision astrometry. Second, we analysed observations of a globular cluster taken with the only currently available Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics assisted camera, GeMS/GSAOI at Gemini South. Making use of previously measured proper motions of stars in the field of view, we were able to model the distortions affecting the stellar positions. We found that they can be as large as 200 mas, and that our best model corrects them to an accuracy of 1 mas. We conclude that future astrometric studies with MICADO requires both an ADC and an accurate modelling of distortions to the field of view, either through an a-priori calibration or an a-posteriori correction.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProc. SPIE 9909, Adaptive Optics Systems V, 99091G
PublisherSPIE
Chapter99091G
ISBN (Print)9781510601970
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Cite this