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Celestial Reference Frames: Definitions and Accuracies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2017

E M Standish
E M Standish*
Affiliation:
Caltech / Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109

Abstract

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The determination of a specific catalogue or ephemeris reference frame is a highly over-determined problem, depending on the particular selection of which coordinates, which objects and at what time(s) the determination is made. The consistency which various determinations exhibit is dependent upon the accuracy of the catalogue or ephemeris itself. This paper discusses the accuracies of the three most prominent celestial reference frames: stellar catalogues, the lunar and planetary ephemerides and the radio source catalogues.

The FK4 stellar catalogue contains known systematic errors amounting to a few tenths of an arcsecond; the FK5 will yield nearly an order of magnitude improvement; HIPPARCOS and Space Telescope expect by the mid 1990's optical interferometry should approach within a couple of years, tens of micro(!)arcseconds after a couple of decades. Present-day lunar and planetary ephemerides have accuracies at the level of for the moon and inner four planets; for the outer planets. Further observational data will permit continued improvement. Radio source catalogues now show internal consistency of

Type
Astrometry
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 129: The Impact of VLBI on Astrophysics and Geophysics , 1988 , pp. 309 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1988 

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