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Register a new userStar catalog position and proper motion corrections in asteroid astrometry
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Added by
Davide Farnocchia Dr
Publication date
2014
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We provide a scheme to correct asteroid astrometric observations for star catalog systematic errors due to inaccurate star positions and proper motions. As reference we select the most accurate stars in the PPMXL catalog, i.e., those based on 2MASS astrometry. We compute position and proper motion corrections for 19 of the most used star catalogs. The use of these corrections provides better ephemeris predictions and improves the error statistics of astrometric observations, e.g., by removing most of the regional systematic errors previously seen in Pan-STARRS PS1 asteroid astrometry. The correction table is publicly available at ftp://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/ssd/debias/debias_2014.tgz and can be freely used in orbit determination algorithms to obtain more reliable asteroid trajectories.
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Astrometric positions of moving objects in the Solar System have been measured using a variety of star catalogs in the past. Previous work has shown that systematic errors in star catalogs can affect the accuracy of astrometric observations. That, in turn, can influence the resulting orbit fits for minor planets. In order to quantify these systematic errors, we compare the positions and proper motion of stellar sources in the most utilized star catalogs to the second release of the Gaia star catalog. The accuracy of Gaia astrometry allows us to unambiguously identify local biases and derive a scheme that can be used to correct past astrometric observations of solar system objects. Here we provide a substantially improved debiasing scheme for 26 astrometric catalogs that were extensively used in minor planet astrometry. Revised corrections near the galactic center eliminate artifacts that could be traced back to reference catalogs used in previous debiasing schemes. Median differences in stellar positions between catalogs now tend to be on the order of several tens of milliarcseconds (mas) but can be as large as 175 mas. Median stellar proper motion corrections scatter around 0.3 mas/yr and range from 1 to 4 mas/yr for star catalogs with and without proper motion, respectively. The tables in this work are meant to be applied to existing optical observations. They are not intended to correct new astrometric measurments as those should make use of the Gaia astrometric catalog. Since previous debiasing schemes already reduced systematics in past observations to a large extent, corrections beyond the current work may not be needed in the foreseeable future.
GAIA leads us to step into a new era with a high astrometry precision of 10 uas. Under such a precision, astrometry will play important roles in detecting and characterizing exoplanets. Specially, we can identify planet pairs in mean motion resonances(MMRs) via astrometry, which constrains the formation and evolution of planetary systems. In accordance with observations, we consider two Jupiters or two super-Earths systems in 1:2, 2:3 and 3:4 MMRs. Our simulations show the false alarm probabilities(FAPs) of a third planet are extremely small while the real two planets can be good fitted with signal-to-noise ratio(SNR)> 3. The probability of reconstructing a resonant system is related with the eccentricities and resonance intensity. Generally, when SNR >= 10, if eccentricities of both planets are larger than 0.01 and the resonance is quite strong, the probabilities to reconstruct the planet pair in MMRs >= 80%. Jupiter pairs in MMRs are reconstructed more easily than super-Earth pairs with similar SNR when we consider the dynamical stability. FAPs are also calculated when we detect planet pairs in or near MMRs. FAPs for 1:2 MMR are largest, i.e., FAPs > 15% when SNR <= 10. Extrapolating from the Kepler planet pairs near MMRs and assuming SNR to be 3, we will discover and reconstruct a few tens of Jupiter pairs and hundreds of super-Earth pairs in 2:3 and 1:2 MMRs within 30 pc. We also compare the differences between even and uneven data cadence and find that planets are better measured with more uniform phase coverage.
A new proper motion catalog is presented, combining the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with second epoch observations in the r band within a portion of the SDSS imaging footprint. The new observations were obtained with the 90prime camera on the Steward Observatory Bok 90 inch telescope, and the Array Camera on the U.S. Naval Observatory, Flagstaff Station, 1.3 meter telescope. The catalog covers 1098 square degrees to r = 22.0, an additional 1521 square degrees to r = 20.9, plus a further 488 square degrees of lesser quality data. Statistical errors in the proper motions range from 5 mas/year at the bright end to 15 mas/year at the faint end, for a typical epoch difference of 6 years. Systematic errors are estimated to be roughly 1 mas/year for the Array Camera data, and as much as 2 - 4 mas/year for the 90prime data (though typically less). The catalog also includes a second epoch of r band photometry.
We derive the astrometric orbit of the photo-center of the close pair alpha UMi AP (=alpha UMi Aa) of the Polaris multiple stellar system. The orbit is based on the spectroscopic orbit of the Cepheid alpha UMi A (orbital period of AP: 29.59 years), and on the difference Delta mu between the quasi-instantaneously measured HIPPARCOS proper motion of Polaris and the long-term-averaged proper motion given by the FK5. There remains an ambiguity in the inclination i of the orbit, since Delta mu cannot distinguish between a prograde orbit (i=50.1 deg) and a retrograde one (i=130.2 deg). Available photographic observations of Polaris favour strongly the retrograde orbit. For the semi-major axis of the photo-center of AP we find about 29 milliarcsec (mas). For the component P, we estimate a mass of 1.5 solar masses and a magnitude difference with respect to the Cepheid of 6.5 mag. The present separation between A and P should be about 160 mas. We obtain the proper motion of the center-of-mass of alpha UMi AP with a mean error of about 0.45 mas/year. Using the derived astrometric orbit, we find the position of the center-of-mass at the epoch 1991.31 with an accuracy of about 3.0 mas. Our ephemerides for the orbital correction, required for going from the position of the center-of-mass to the instantaneous position of the photo-center of AP at an arbitrary epoch, have a typical uncertainty of 5 mas. For epochs which differ from the HIPPARCOS epoch by more than a few years, a prediction for the actual position of Polaris based on our results should be significantly more accurate than using the HIPPARCOS data in a linear prediction, since the HIPPARCOS proper motion contains the instantaneous orbital motion of about 4.9 mas/year = 3.1 km/s. Finally we derive the galactic space motion of Polaris.
We compared high-contrast near-infrared images of the core of R136 taken by VLT/SPHERE, in two epochs separated by 3.06 years. For the first time we monitored the dynamics of the detected sources in the core of R136 from a ground-based telescope with adaptive optics. The aim of these observations was to search for High prOper Motion cAndidates (HOMAs) in the central region of R136 (r<6) where it has been challenging for other instruments. Two bright sources (K<15mag and V<16mag) are located near R136a1 and R136c (massive WR stars) and have been identified as potential HOMAs. These sources have significantly shifted in the images with respect to the mean shift of all reliable detected sources and their neighbours, and six times their own astrometric errors. We calculate their proper motions to be 1.36pm0.22 mas/yr (321pm52 km/s) and 1.15pm0.11 mas/yr (273pm26 km/s). We discuss different possible scenarios to explain the magnitude of such extreme proper motions, and argue for the necessity to conduct future observations to conclude on the nature of HOMAs in the core of R136.
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