Concise CIO based precession-nutation formulations^*

¹ Observatoire de Paris, SYRTE/UMR8630-CNRS, 61 avenue de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France e-mail: n.capitaine@obspm.fr
² Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Science & Innovation Campus, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, UK e-mail: P.T.Wallace@rl.ac.uk

Received: 8 October 2007
Accepted: 7 November 2007

Abstract

Context.The IAU 2000/2006 precession-nutation models have precision goals measured in microarcseconds. To reach this level of performance has required series containing terms at over 1300 frequencies and involving several thousand amplitude coefficients. There are many astronomical applications for which such precision is not required and the associated heavy computations are wasteful. This justifies developing smaller models that achieve adequate precision with greatly reduced computing costs.

Aims.We discuss strategies for developing simplified IAU 2000/2006 precession-nutation procedures that offer a range of compromises between accuracy and computing costs.

Methods.The chain of transformations linking celestial and terrestrial coordinates comprises frame bias, precession-nutation, Earth rotation and polar motion. We address the bias and precession-nutation (NPB) portion of the chain, linking the Geocentric Celestial Reference System (GCRS) with the Celestial Intermediate Reference System (CIRS), the latter based on the Celestial Intermediate Pole (CIP) and Celestial Intermediate Origin (CIO). Starting from direct series that deliver the CIP coordinates  and (via the quantity ) the CIO locator s, we look at the opportunities for simplification.

Results.The biggest reductions come from truncating the series, but some additional gains can be made in the areas of the matrix formulation, the expressions for the nutation arguments and by subsuming long period effects into the bias quantities. Three example models are demonstrated that approximate the IAU 2000/2006 CIP to accuracies of 1 mas, 16 mas and 0.4 arcsec throughout 1995-2050 but with computation costs reduced by 1, 2 and 3 orders of magnitude compared with the full model.