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Monday
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February 13, 2012
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The W2J00 Catalog
The files listed here contain the results of observations made during
the USNO's Pole-to-Pole program known as the W2J00. Between the years
1985 and 1996 the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO), using two transit
circles, one located in Washington, DC (USA) and the other in
Blenheim, New Zealand, conducted an ambitious program of absolute
observations of positions of celestial objects completely covering
both hemispheres. Over 737,000 individual observations were made,
primarily of the International Reference Stars (IRS) and FK5 stars, as
well as all the major planets (except Pluto) and thirteen minor
planets. This included some 55,000 observations of day-time objects
including the Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars.
The original objective was to form a traditional, all-sky catalog
of absolute star positions which could be firmly linked to the
dynamical system. However, with the success of the Hipparcos project
and the adoption of the ICRF as the celestial reference frame, the
primary focus of the pole-to-pole program changed. The stellar
positions have been differentially reduced to the system of Hipparcos
and these were used to tie the planetary observations into the
ICRF. Thus the program has resulted in a body of high quality
observational data (average standard deviation of a mean position of
about 75 mas) that will provide important input for the production of
ICRF-based ephemerides. This is particularly true for the outer and
minor planets.
Details can be found in the w2j00intro_v3 files. The format of the
star data can be found in the file w2j00.format and the date in
final_positions.w2j00.v03 and final_positions.w2j00.v03.ra_order. The
data on the planets can be found in the w2j00xxx.srt files where xxx
is the first three letters of the planet's name.
Right click to download:
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