Science with the Space Interferometry Mission

John Tomsick

With microarcsecond optical astrometry, the sky will come alive for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) as it uncovers stellar motions that have previously been hidden from view. While a main focus of SIM is to study extrasolar planets, there is a wide variety of Galactic and extra-galactic science that is planned for this future mission. SIM will be capable of providing parallax and proper motion measurements for essentially any star in our Galaxy brighter than a V-magnitude of 20, and it will also be able to map out orbital motion for binary systems, including X-ray binaries containing neutron stars and black holes. In this talk, I will give an overview of the mission and its scientific goals, and then I will discuss the advances that SIM will allow in the study of Galactic compact objects.