Contribution of HIPPARCOS to the Determination of Precession

Abstract

The IAU (1976) luni-solar precession constant was derived by Fricke from intensive study of the catalog of 512 FK4-FK4/Sup distant stars. At present, when the data from the catalog HIPPARCOS is available, it is helpful to reconsider Fricke's analysis. This paper presents a redetermination of precession based on the following new factors: (a) the accurate parallaxes of stars have been taken into account; (b) galactic rotation and other kinematics have been eliminated from the proper motions of 512 stars; (c) the systems of the FK5 and improved GC catalog were used in combination with the HIPPARCOS catalog; (d) a new method (the MOTOR) of studying stellar kinematics was used. This method is based on the decomposition of proper motions on a set of orthogonal functions. The MOTOR, in contrast to the commonly used Least Squares Procedure, provides a test for whether or not the model is compatible with the data. Derived corrections to the IAU (1976) luni-solar precession constant are consistent with the results from VLBI observations and kinematic study of modern catalogues of proper motions.