htof: A new open-source tool for analyzing Hipparcos, Gaia, and future astrometric missions

We present htof, an open-source tool for interpreting and fitting the intermediate astrometric data (IAD) from both the 1997 and 2007 reductions of Hipparcos, the scanning-law of Gaia, and future missions such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (NGRST). htof solves for the astrometric parameters of any system for any arbitrary combination of absolute astrometric missions. In preparation for later Gaia data releases, htof supports arbitrarily high-order astrometric solutions (e.g. five-, seven-, nine-parameter fits). Using htof, we find that the IAD of 6617 sources in Hipparcos 2007 might have been affected by a data corruption issue. htof integrates an ad-hoc correction that reconciles the IAD of these sources with their published catalog solutions. We developed htof to study masses and orbital parameters of sub-stellar companions, and we outline its implementation in one orbit fitting code (orvara, https://github.com/t-brandt/orvara). We use htof to predict a range of hypothetical additional planets in the $\beta$~Pic system, which could be detected by coupling NGRST astrometry with Gaia and Hipparcos. htof is pip installable and available at https://github.com/gmbrandt/htof .
Comment: Accepted to AJ. References updated in version 2. The Hipparcos 2007 Re-reduction Java Tool Intermediate Astrometric Data are available at , via the "zip file" link at https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/hipparcos/hipparcos-2 : "...human readable version of the IAD of the Java tool in a zip file [warning: ~350 MB]..."