FAME: Fizeau Astrometric Mapping Explorer

Marvin Germain, Sean Urban, M. Murison, P. K. Seidelmann, K. J. Johnston
U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington DC

Michael Shao, James A. Fanson, Jeffrey Yu
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA

Nick Davinic, Lee J. Rickard
Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC

FAME is a proposed small, fast, cheap astrometric satellite to operate in a scanning mode like Hipparcos. The instrument will use two fixed dilute aperture telescopes to measure a fixed angle between stars which are detected on an array of CCDs. The positions, magnitudes, and colors of all stars to approximately visual magnitude 15 will be measured.

In addition to a catalog of positions, proper motions and parallaxes of all stars to 15 magnitude, with magnitude dependent accuracy of positions, proper motions and parallaxes of 20 to 800 microarcseconds, 20 to 800 microarcseconds per year and 20 to 800 microarcseconds respectively, the scientific goal is determination of stellar luminosities, masses; investigation of stellar evolution; refinement of the cosmic distance scale; searches for binaries, brown dwarfs and planetary companions; and studies of stellar kinematics.