- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/644/A159
- Title:
- The third realization of the ICRF, ICRF3
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/644/A159
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- A new realization of the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) is presented based on the work achieved by a working group of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) mandated for this purpose. This new realization follows the initial realization of theICRF completed in 1997 and its successor, ICRF2, adopted as a replacement in 2009. The new frame, referred to as ICRF3, is based on nearly 40 years of data acquired by very long baseline interferometry at the standard geodetic and astrometric radio frequencies (8.4 and 2.3GHz), supplemented with data collected at higher radio frequencies (24GHz and dual-frequency 32 and 8.4GHz) over the past 15 years. State-of-the-art astronomical and geophysical modeling has been used to analyze these data and derive source positions. The modeling integrates, for the first time, the effect of the galactocentric acceleration of the solar system (directly estimated from the data) which, if not considered, induces significant deformation of the frame due to the data span. The new frame includes positions at 8.4GHz for 4536 extragalactic sources. Of these, 303 sources, uniformly distributed on the sky, are identified as "defining sources" and as such serve to define the axes of the frame. Positions at 8.4GHz are supplemented with positions at 24GHz for 824 sources and at 32GHz for 678 sources. In all, ICRF3 comprises 4588 sources, with three-frequency positions available for 600 of these. Source positions have been determined independently at each of the frequencies in order to preserve the underlying astrophysical content behind such positions. They are reported for epoch 2015.0 and must be propagated for observations at other epochs for the most accurate needs, accounting for the acceleration toward the Galactic center, which results in a dipolar proper motion field of amplitude 0.0058 milliarcsecond/yr (mas/yr). The frame is aligned onto the International Celestial Reference System to within the accuracy of ICRF2 and shows a median positional uncertainty of about 0.1mas in right ascension and 0.2 mas in declination, with a noise floor of 0.03mas in the individual source coordinates. A subset of 500 sources is found to have extremely accurate positions, in the range of 0.03 to 0.06mas, at the traditional 8.4GHz frequency. Comparing ICRF3 with the recently released Gaia Celestial Reference Frame 2 in the optical domain, there is no evidence for deformations larger than 0.03 mas between the two frames, in agreement with the ICRF3 noise level. Significant positional offsets between the three ICRF3 frequencies are detected for about 5% of the sources.Moreover, a notable fraction (22%) of the sources shows optical and radio positions that are significantly offset. There are indications that these positional offsets may be the manifestation of extended source structures. This third realization of the ICRF was adopted by the IAU at its 30th General Assembly in August 2018 and replaced the previous realization, ICRF2, on January 1, 2019.
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- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/I/259
- Title:
- The Tycho-2 Catalogue
- Short Name:
- I/259
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The Tycho-2 Catalogue is an astrometric reference catalogue containing positions and proper motions as well as two-colour photometric data for the 2.5 million brightest stars in the sky. The Tycho-2 positions and magnitudes are based on precisely the same observations as the original Tycho Catalogue (hereafter Tycho-1; see Cat. <I/239>)) collected by the star mapper of the ESA Hipparcos satellite, but Tycho-2 is much bigger and slightly more precise, owing to a more advanced reduction technique. Components of double stars with separations down to 0.8 arcsec are included. Proper motions precise to about 2.5 mas/yr are given as derived from a comparison with the Astrographic Catalogue and 143 other ground-based astrometric catalogues, all reduced to the Hipparcos celestial coordinate system. Tycho-2 supersedes in most applications Tycho-1, as well as the ACT (Cat. <I/246>) and TRC (Cat. <I/250>) catalogues based on Tycho-1. Supplement-1 lists stars from the Hipparcos and Tycho-1 Catalogues which are not in Tycho-2. Supplement-2 lists 1146 Tycho-1 stars which are probably either false or heavily disturbed. For more information, please consult the Tycho-2 home page: http://www.astro.ku.dk/~erik/Tycho-2
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/I/250
- Title:
- The Tycho Reference Catalogue
- Short Name:
- I/250
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The Tycho Reference Catalogue (TRC) contains high-quality positions and proper motions for 990182 stars of the Tycho Catalogue. The proper motions were derived from Tycho positions and Astrographic Catalogue positions reduced to the Hipparcos system. The median accuracy of the TRC position components is 40 mas at J1991.25. The median accuracy of the proper motion is about 2.5 mas/yr. Systematic errors are less than about 1.0 mas(/yr). The quality of the proper motions in TRC is assessed by comparison with the Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues. Comparison with the recent ACT Catalogue which is based on an independent reduction of the same observations as used for constructing the TRC is reported.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/I/294A
- Title:
- The UCAC2 Bright Star Supplement
- Short Name:
- I/294A
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The UCAC2 Bright Star Supplement (UCAC2 BSS) is meant to be used with the Second U.S. Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC2, CDS Catalogue number <I/289>) to fill in the missing bright stars and yet-to-be observed northern regions of the UCAC2. In total 430,000 stars, mostly from the region north of +40 degrees declination, make up this supplementary data set. All astrometric data were extracted from either the Hipparcos Catalogue or the Tycho-2 Catalogue; photometric data were extracted from the Hipparcos, Tycho-2, and 2MASS catalogues. Cross references between the data sources are given.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/I/344
- Title:
- The URAT Parallax Catalog (UPC). Update 2018
- Short Name:
- I/344
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- United States Naval Observatory (USNO) Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) Parallax Catalog south (UPCs) and north (UPCn). These data are based on the accepted paper for the Astronomical Journal (2018) by C. Finch, N. Zacharias, and W.-C. Jao, "URAT south parallax results: discovery of new nearby stars" (2018AJ....155..176F). The southern data are new, while the northern data contain a subset of the previously published UPC catalog after applying the more stringent selection criteria of the south data and supplementing the data with columns of the southern data. The previously published URAT Parallax Catalog (UPC) paper is: C. Finch and N. Zacharias (2016AJ....151..160F, Cat. J/AJ/151/160) (arXiv:1604.06739).
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/I/252
- Title:
- The USNO-A2.0 Catalogue
- Short Name:
- I/252
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- USNO-A2.0 is a catalog of 526,280,881 stars, and is based on a re-reduction of the Precision Measuring Machine (PMM) scans that were the basis for the USNO-A1.0 catalog. The major difference between A2.0 and A1.0 is that A1.0 used the Guide Star Catalog (Lasker et al. 1986, see Cat. <I/220>) as its reference frame whereas A2.0 uses the ICRF as realized by the USNO ACT catalog (Urban et al. 1997, see Cat. II/246>). A2.0 presents right ascension and declination (J2000, epoch of the mean of the blue and red plate) and the blue and red magnitude for each star. Usage of the ACT catalog as well as usage of new astrometric and photometric reduction algorithms should provide improved astrometry (mostly in the reduction of systematic errors) and improved photometry (because the brightest stars on each plate had B and V magnitudes measured by the Tycho experiment on the Hipparcos satellite). The basic format of the catalog and its compilation is the same as for A1.0, and most users should be able to migrate to this newer version with minimal effort.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/I/284
- Title:
- The USNO-B1.0 Catalog
- Short Name:
- I/284
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The USNO-B1.0 is a catalog that presents positions, proper motions, magnitudes in various optical passbands, and star/galaxy estimators for 1,045,913,669 objects derived from 3,648,832,040 separate observations. The data were taken from scans of 7,435 Schmidt plates taken from various sky surveys during the last 50 years. The catalog is expected to be complete down to V=21; the estimated accuracies are 0.2arcsec for the positions at J2000, 0.3mag in up to 5 colors, and 85% accuracy for distinguishing stars from non-stellar objects.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/194/25
- Title:
- The VLBA calibrator search for the BeSSeL survey
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/194/25
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present the results of a survey of radio continuum sources near the Galactic plane using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). Our observations are designed to identify compact extragalactic sources of milliarcsecond size that can be used for parallax measurements in the Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy Survey. We selected point sources from the NVSS and CORNISH catalogs with flux densities above 30mJy and within 1.5{deg} of known maser targets. Of the 1529 sources observed, 199 were detected. For sources detected on three or more baselines, we determined accurate positions and evaluated their quality as potential calibrators. Most of the 1330 sources that were not detected with the VLBA are probably of extragalactic origin.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/233/3
- Title:
- The VLBA Extragalactic Proper Motion Catalog
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/233/3
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present a catalog of extragalactic proper motions created using archival VLBI data and our own VLBA astrometry. The catalog contains 713 proper motions, with average uncertainties of ~24{mu}as/yr, including 40 new or improved proper motion measurements using relative astrometry with the VLBA. The observations were conducted in the X-band and yielded positions with uncertainties of ~70{mu}as. We add 10 new redshifts using spectroscopic observations taken at Apache Point Observatory and Gemini North. With the VLBA Extragalactic Proper Motion Catalog, we detect the secular aberration drift-the apparent motion of extragalactic objects caused by the solar system's acceleration around the Galactic center-at a 6.3{sigma} significance. We model the aberration drift as a spheroidal dipole, with the square root of the power equal to 4.89+/-0.77{mu}as/yr, an amplitude of 1.69+/-0.27{mu}as/yr, and an apex at (275.2{deg}+/-10.0{deg}, -29.4{deg}+/-8.8{deg}). Our dipole model detects the aberration drift at a higher significance than some previous studies, but at a lower amplitude than expected or previously measured. The full aberration drift may be partially removed by the no-net-rotation constraint used when measuring archival extragalactic radio source positions. Like the cosmic microwave background dipole, which is induced by the observer's motion, the aberration drift signal should be subtracted from extragalactic proper motions in order to detect cosmological proper motions, including the Hubble expansion, long-period stochastic gravitational waves, and the collapse of large-scale structure.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/142/35
- Title:
- The VLBA Galactic Plane Survey (VGaPS)
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/142/35
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We presents accurate absolute positions from a 24 GHz Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) search for compact extragalactic sources in an area where the density of known calibrators with precise coordinates is low. The goals were to identify additional sources suitable for use as phase calibrators for galactic sources, determine their precise positions, and produce radio images. In order to achieve these goals, we developed a new software package, PIMA, for determining group delays from wide-band data with much lower detection limit. With the use of PIMA we have detected 327 sources out of 487 targets observed in three 24 hour VLBA experiments. Among the 327 detected objects, 176 are within 10 degrees of the Galactic plane. This VGaPS catalogue of source positions, plots of correlated flux density versus projected baseline length, contour plots, as well as weighted CLEAN images and calibrated visibility data in FITS format, are available on the Web at http://astrogeo.org/vgaps. Approximately one half of objects from the 24GHz catalogue were observed at dual band 8.6GHz and 2.3GHz experiments. Position differences at 24GHz versus 8.6/2.3GHz for all but two objects on average are strictly within reported uncertainties. We found that for two objects with complex structure positions at different frequencies correspond to different components of a source.