Astrometric detection of exoplanets

Abstract

As the most ancient branch of astronomy, astrometry has been developed for thousands of years. However, it has only recently become possible to utilize astrometry for the detection of exoplanets. Gaia, an astrometric surveyor of 1 billion stars, is capable of measuring the position of stars with a precision as high as 20 $\hat{I}¼$as. Gaia is expected to discover more than 10,000 exoplanets by the end of its mission, surpassing the productivity of most exoplanet surveys. In this chapter, I will introduce different techniques used to achieve high-precision astrometry. Subsequently, I will explore how both relative and absolute astrometry can be employed to detect exoplanets. Finally, I will present the detection limit of the Gaia astrometric survey.

9 pages; 5 figures; Preprint of a chapter for the 'Encyclopedia of Astrophysics' (Editor-in-Chief Ilya Mandel, Section Editor Dimitri Veras) to be published by Elsevier as a Reference Module