Minor planets ephemerides improvement. From joint analysis of HIPPARCOS and ground-based observations

Hestroffer, D.; Viateau, B.; Rapaport, M.

Netherlands, France

Abstract

Two methods are considered for the improvement of the ephemerides of the asteroids observed by the Hipparcos satellite. They utilize different combinations of ground-based and space-based data. In particular, we develop a method based on an analysis of the variance matrix in the least-squares solution of Hipparcos observations taken alone. Application and comparison of the results for (2) Pallas and (324) Bamberga are given. It is shown that one of the methods is less sensitive to the weighting of the equations of condition. This procedure can be applied to the improvement of the ephemerides of asteroids when the observational data consist of subsets of very different accuracies. Based on data from the Hipparcos astrometry satellite

1998 Astronomy and Astrophysics
Hipparcos 2