Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
The celestial positions of extragalactic radio sources may be determined to a precision of less than a milliarcsecond. Further, since these sources are believed to be at great distances from the galaxy, little or no proper motion is expected on scales of order a milliarcsecond. Therefore a reference frame based on the positions of carefully selected sources so that display compact radiation on scales less than a milliarcsecond will noticeably improve the precision of present celestial reference frames. If the radio objects making up the reference frame also emit radiation at optical wavelengths, and assuming the optical/radio radiation is coincident, the radio frame can update the optical frame to the accuracy of the individual optical positions.