ED054
Identifying low-b radio stars for Gaia parallax calibration
The Gaia space observatory has measured more precise trigonometric parallaxes than any other facility. Nevertheless, the latest released Gaia parallaxes are on average biased by approximately 0.02mas. This bias, aka. the Gaia parallax zero-point, varies with the position, the magnitude and the colour of the target. At low Galactic latitudes, owing to the rare identifications of Gaia quasars, the estimation of the Gaia parallax zero-points turns out to be extremely challenging. To refine the Gaia parallax zero-points at low Galactic latitudes, we look to enriching the small sample of ~10 low-Galactic-latitude radio stars that can potentially serve as ideal Gaia parallax calibrators. To pilot the sample enrichment program, this proposal aims at achieving VLBI detections of up to 17 new radio star candidates that we identified, and investigating their properties (including their spectral indices and morphologies).
Observation pages at the EVN archive:
Context for this dataThis data is part of the archive of VLBI data maintained by JIVE on behalf of the EVN, a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa. The EVN archive itself has the DOI https://doi.org/10.17616/R3Z197