Constraining Extragalactic Proper Motion with Gaia Astrometry

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Maloney, Sean, Zhang, Tianqing, Croft, Rupert, Malanchev, Konstantin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Maloney, Sean
Zhang, Tianqing
Croft, Rupert
Malanchev, Konstantin
author_facet Maloney, Sean
Zhang, Tianqing
Croft, Rupert
Malanchev, Konstantin
contents The Solar System's secular motion with respect to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) rest frame is inferred from the CMB dipole and should induce a tiny, coherent apparent drift in the positions of nearby galaxies, referred to as the extragalactic proper motion. We test the feasibility of a purely geometric measurement of this effect by combining Gaia DR2 and DR3 astrometry with low-redshift spectroscopic galaxy catalogs to build a large, full-sky sample of $67,173$ galaxies. Although we do not obtain a statistically significant detection of the expected dipole signal, we place the tightest constraint to date on the extragalactic proper motion $\barπ$. Using galaxies with comoving distance $D>5 {\, \rm Mpc}$, we also place the tightest constraints on cosmic extragalactic proper motion $\barπ_{\rm cosmic}$, with uncertainty $\sim 10\times$ the measured CMB dipole value. Our $1σ$ uncertainty on the near field extragalactic proper motion $\barπ_{\rm nf}$ is approximately $\sim 1.3\times$ the expected CMB measurement, demonstrating that Gaia astrometry is approaching the sensitivity required for a direct detection of near field Hubble constant in future releases.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_00280
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Constraining Extragalactic Proper Motion with Gaia Astrometry
Maloney, Sean
Zhang, Tianqing
Croft, Rupert
Malanchev, Konstantin
Astrophysics of Galaxies
The Solar System's secular motion with respect to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) rest frame is inferred from the CMB dipole and should induce a tiny, coherent apparent drift in the positions of nearby galaxies, referred to as the extragalactic proper motion. We test the feasibility of a purely geometric measurement of this effect by combining Gaia DR2 and DR3 astrometry with low-redshift spectroscopic galaxy catalogs to build a large, full-sky sample of $67,173$ galaxies. Although we do not obtain a statistically significant detection of the expected dipole signal, we place the tightest constraint to date on the extragalactic proper motion $\barπ$. Using galaxies with comoving distance $D>5 {\, \rm Mpc}$, we also place the tightest constraints on cosmic extragalactic proper motion $\barπ_{\rm cosmic}$, with uncertainty $\sim 10\times$ the measured CMB dipole value. Our $1σ$ uncertainty on the near field extragalactic proper motion $\barπ_{\rm nf}$ is approximately $\sim 1.3\times$ the expected CMB measurement, demonstrating that Gaia astrometry is approaching the sensitivity required for a direct detection of near field Hubble constant in future releases.
title Constraining Extragalactic Proper Motion with Gaia Astrometry
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.00280