Hipparcos, Three Years After Launch

Abstract

In a first part, the present status of the HIPPARCOS mission is described. Despite the degradations and failures of gyroscopes, it is still hoped that a 4 1/2 mission duration will be reached. The first-year of data has been reduced by both FAST and NDAC consortia. For the best 46200 observed stars, the distribution of standard errors in positions has a maximum of 1.5 mas in latitude and 1.8 mas in longitude and the mean standard error for parallaxes is of the order of 3 mas. The comparison of results obtained by both consortia shows that the differences are small and quite consistent with the announced internal precisions. Magnitude measurements are precise to 0.02 magnitude for a 4 second observation. The precision to be expected for double star observations is also given. The main new result is that the magnitudes of the components are obtained with a few hundredths of a magnitude precision. This allows to devise a new method of mass determination based upon the parallax and a recalibrated mass-luminosity diagram. The parallax dependence of the results is much more favourable than in the case of the classical determination of masses using orbital motions.