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Issue A&A
Volume 439, Number 2, August IV 2005
Page(s) 791 - 803
Section Celestial mechanics and astrometry
DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20053193



A&A 439, 791-803 (2005)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20053193

A new reduction of the raw Hipparcos data

F. van Leeuwen1 and E. Fantino2

1  Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
    e-mail: fvl@ast.cam.ac.uk
2  Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università di Padova, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio 2, 35122 Padova, Italy

(Received 4 April 2005 / Accepted 17 May 2005 )

Abstract
We present an outline of a new reduction of the Hipparcos astrometric data, the justifications of which are described in the accompanying paper. The emphasis is on those aspects of the data analysis that are fundamentally different from the ones used for the catalogue published in 1997. The new reduction uses a dynamical modelling of the satellite's attitude. It incorporates provisions for scan-phase discontinuities and hits, most of which have now been identified. Solutions for the final along-scan attitude (the reconstruction of the satellite's scan phase), the abscissa corrections and the instrument model, originally solved simultaneously in the great-circle solution, are now de-coupled. This is made possible by starting the solution iterations with the astrometric data from the published catalogue. The de-coupling removes instabilities that affected great-circle solutions for short data sets in the published data. The modelling-noise reduction implies smaller systematic errors, which is reflected in a reduction of the abscissa-error correlations by about a factor 40. Special care is taken to ensure that measurements from both fields of view contribute significantly to the along-scan attitude solution. This improves the overall connectivity of the data and rigidity of the reconstructed sky, which is of critical importance to the reliability of the astrometric data. The changes in the reduction process and the improved understanding of the dynamics of the satellite result in considerable formal-error reductions for stars brighter than 8th magnitude.


Key words: space vehicles: instruments -- astrometry




© ESO 2005

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