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S. D. Horner, M. E. Germain (USNO), T. P. Greene (LMMS), K. J. Johnston, D. G. Monet, M. A. Murison (USNO), J. D. Phillips, R. D. Reasenberg (SAO), P. K. Seidelmann, S. E. Urban (USNO)
The Full-sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer (FAME) is a small satellite designed to perform an all-sky, astrometric survey with unprecedented accuracy. FAME will create an accurate astrometric catalog of ~40,000,000 stars with visual band magnitudes 5 < V < 15. For bright stars, 5 < V < 9, FAME will determine positions and parallaxes accurate to < 50 microarcseconds, with proper motion errors < 50 microarcseconds/year. For fainter stars, 9 < V < 15, FAME will determine positions and parallaxes accurate to < 300 microarcseconds, with proper motion errors < 300 microarcseconds/year. FAME will also collect photometric data on these 40,000,000 stars in four Sloan DSS colors.
FAME will map our quadrant of the galaxy out to 2 kpc from the Sun providing the information needed to calibrate the standard candles that define the extragalactic distance scale, calibrate the absolute luminosities of stars of all spectral types for studies of stellar structure and evolution, and detect orbital motions caused by brown dwarfs and giant planets. FAME will not only improve on the accuracies of star positions determined by Hipparcos but also expand the volume of space for which accurate positions are known by a factor of 8,000.
FAME is a joint development effort of the US Naval Observatory, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space, the Naval Research Laboratory, and Omitron Incorporated.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://aries.usno.navy.mil/ad/fame. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: shorner@usno.navy.mil