Sunday

May 26, 2013

Read the Astronomical Journal Article, " A Radio Optical Reference Frame. VIII. CCD Observations...," or see the December 1995 issue (Vol 110, No. 6, Pages 3093-3106). Look at some CCD images of RORF sources. These CCD images were made using the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO) Kitt Peak (KPNO) and Cerro Tololo (CTIO) telescopes and are available in FITS and GIF formats.

Presented here are preliminary results of an ongoing program to obtain precise optical positions of the RORF sources. The radio frame, defined by the positions of selected extragalactic radio sources, can now be established to an accuracy of better than one milliarcsecond. This defines a frame that is more accurate than the internal accuracy of the HIPPARCOS catalog and far exceeds that of the Fifth Fundamental Catalog (FK5). Because of the need to link these optical reference frames to the radio, it is important to include in the radio catalog objects that are detectable at both radio and optical wavelengths. In this way, the accuracy of the optical catalogs can be improved, including the proper motions.