Improving the S/X Celestial Reference Frame in the South: A Status Update

Aletha de Witt (1) , Sayan Basu , Patrick Charlot (2) , David Gordon (3) , Christopher S Jacobs (4) , Megan Johnson (3) , H Krásná (5) , K Le Bail (6) , Fengchun Shu (7) , O Titov (8) , M Schartner (9)

1 SARAO - South African Radio Astronomy Observatory
2 LAB - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux [Pessac]
3 USNO - United States Naval Observatory
4 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
5 TU Wien - Vienna University of Technology = Technische Universität Wien
6 OSO - Onsala Space Observatory
7 SHAO - Shanghai Astronomical Observatory [Shanghai]
8 Geoscience Australia
9 ETH Zürich - Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Zürich]

Catalogs of positions of compact extragalactic radio sources, including the ICRF-3, are generally weaker in the south by factors of 2 or more in both density and precision. In 2018 we started a campaign to improve the S/X celestial reference frame in the South by upgrading existing IVS astrometric observing programmes. Our efforts were mainly focused on the Celestial Reference Frame (CRF) and Celestial Reference Frame Deep South (CRDS) sessions, which are dedicated astrometric observing programmes of sources at mid-and southern declinations. In particular, the data rate of the CRF and CRDS

Mots clés: Astrometry; VLBI; Celestial Reference Frame; Southern Hemisphere; quasars

Domaines: Astrophysique [astro-ph]

Aletha de Witt, Sayan Basu, Patrick Charlot, David Gordon, Christopher S Jacobs, et al.. Improving the S/X Celestial Reference Frame in the South: A Status Update. 25th Working Meeting of the European VLBI Group for Geodesy and Astrometry (EVGA), Mar 2021, Cyberspace, France. ⟨hal-03453927⟩