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Numerical planetary and lunar ephemerides: present status, precision and accuracies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2017

E. Myles Standish Jr.
E. Myles Standish Jr.*
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, Pasadena, California 91109 USA

Abstract

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The Ephemeris Development Program has been in existence for nearly 20 years at JPL, providing high precision present-day knowledge of the positions of the moon and major planets. The resultant ephemerides are used extensively in the navigation of spacecraft and in the reduction of astrometric observations. They also provide a key element in the testing of various theories of gravitation and a means for the determination of various relevant astronomical constants. The ephemerides and the process of creating them are both shown to be viable tools for the measurement of various gravitational effects which govern the motions of the objects in the solar system.

This paper gives an outline of the least-squares adjustment of the ephemerides to the observations, the present physical (dynamical) model, the present observations to which the ephemerides are fit, the expected accuracies of various ephemeris elements, recent and future observations and features of the solar system which are poorly determined (and thereby place limits upon the accuracies). Recent comparisons with similar work at the Center for Astrophysics (formerly at MIT) are serving as valuable independent checks on formulations and procedures used at each institution; they also lend insight toward what are the realistic accuracies being attained. The export procedure, by which an outside user may obtain and use the JPL ephemerides, is described.

Type
Motions of Natural Bodies in the Solar System
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 114: Relativity in Celestial Mechanics and Astrometry , 1986 , pp. 71 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1986 

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