About the Project

History

Scientific tasks

Orbit

Optical layout

Positioning

OSIRIS

LIDA

Current status

Publications

Contacts

Hipparchos was the first who carried out the systematic astronomical observations in II century B. C. His efforts to compile a star catalogue were called by Pliny ’a bold attempt to hand the heaven over to the descendants.

Hipparcos — the first space-borne astrometric experiment was launched in 1989 by the European Space Agency. The scientific objectives of the Hipparcos (High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite) mission were accurate measurements of trigonometric parallaxes, proper motions and positions for more than 100 000 selected stars, mostly fainter than 10^m magnitude.

A single dish radio telescope can measure the coordinates of the stellar radio sources with a few minutes’ accuracy.

The next step to increase the accuracy was the creation of radio interferometer. The world’s largest interconnected array radio interferometer is VLA (Very Large Array) in New-Mexico. It consists of 27 identical parabolic antennae each 25 meters in diameter.

Currently VLA is not used for astrometry, since the more precise VLBI — Very Long Baseline Interferometry became available.