Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T10:17:47.621Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Maintenance of the ICRF: Radio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2015

Alan L. Fey*
Affiliation:
U.S. Naval Observatory Washington, DC 20392-5420 USA

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Extragalactic radio sources are assumed to be very distant and thus should exhibit little or no detectable proper motions. A reference frame defined by the positions of extragalactic radio sources may be said to be a quasi-inertial frame (i.e. a frame whose basis is inertial) with little or no time dependency. Unfortunately, although extragalactic sources are good as ICRF objects, most extragalactic sources display intrinsic structure on angular scales larger than the accuracy of their position estimates. Temporal variations of the intrinsic structure of these objects will result in apparent motion when observations are made at several epochs. Because the underlying physics of extragalactic sources is not as well understood as that of the stars which define the stellar reference frame, we can only describe with certainty what the radio sources did during the particular interval of time covered by previous observations. We cannot predict theoretically what behavior can be expected in the future. It is therefore necessary to regularly measure the structure of ICRF sources, and monitor their changes, in order to maintain the ICRF and make it more useful to astronomers.

Type
II. Joint Discussions
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1998

References

Chariot, P. (1990) Radio-Source Structure in Astrometric and Geodetic Very Long Baseline Interferometry, AJ, 99, 13091326 Google Scholar
Fey, A.L., Clegg, A.W. & Fomalont, E.B. (1996) VLBA Observations of Radio Reference Frame Sources. I., ApJS, 105, 299330 Google Scholar
Fey, A.L. & Charlot, P. (1997) VLBA Observations of Radio Reference Frame Sources. II. Astrometric Suitability Based on Observed Structure, ApJS, 111, 95142 Google Scholar
MacMillan, D.S. & Ma, C. (1997) Atmospheric gradients and the VLBI terrestrial and celestial reference frames, Geophys. R. Lett., 24, 453456 Google Scholar