NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Back to Results
A Proposed Astrometric Observing Program for Densifying the ICRF in the Northern HemisphereThe International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) could be of significant importance to the astronomy community for observing weak objects angularly close to ICRF sources with the phase-referencing technique. However, the current distribution of the ICRF sources is found to be largely non-uniform, which precludes the wide use of the ICRF as a catalog of calibrators for phase-referencing observations. We show that adding 150 new sources at appropriate sky locations would reduce the distance to the nearest ICRF source for any randomly-chosen location in the northern sky from up to 13 deg to up to 6 deg, close to the requirement of the phase-referencing technique. Accordingly, a set of 150 such sources, selected from the Jodrell Bank-VLA Astrometric Survey and filtered out using the Very Long Baseline Array Calibrator Survey, has been proposed for observation to the European VLBI Network (EVN) extended with additional geodetic stations. The use of the EVN is essential to this project since most of the new sources will be weaker and thus difficult to observe with standard geodetic networks.
Document ID
20000074707
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Charlot, Patrick
(Observatoire de Bordeaux Floirac, France)
Viateau, Bruno
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA United States)
Baudry, Alain
(Observatoire de Bordeaux Floirac, France)
Ma, Chopo
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Fey, Alan
(Naval Observatory Washington, DC United States)
Eubanks, Marshall
(Naval Observatory Washington, DC United States)
Jacobs, Christopher
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA United States)
Sovers, Ojars
(Remote Sensing Analysis Systems Unknown)
Date Acquired
August 19, 2013
Publication Date
May 1, 2000
Publication Information
Publication: International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry: 2000 General Meeting Proceedings
Subject Category
Astrophysics
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
Document Inquiry

Available Downloads

There are no available downloads for this record.
No Preview Available