Treatment of star catalog biases in asteroid astrometric observations

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2010.06.003 Byline: Steven R. Chesley (a), James Baer (b), David G. Monet (c) Keywords: Asteroids; Comets Abstract: In this paper, we discuss the detection of systematic biases in star positions of the USNO A1.0, A2.0, and B1.0 catalogs, as deduced from the residuals of numbered asteroid observations. We present a technique for the removal of these biases, and validate this technique by illustrating the resulting improvements in numbered asteroid residuals, and by establishing that debiased orbits predict omitted observations more accurately than do orbits derived from non-debiased observations. We also illustrate the benefits of debiasing to high-precision astrometric applications such as asteroid mass determination and collision analysis, including a refined prediction of the impact probability of 99942 Apophis. Specifically, we find the IP of Apophis to be lowered by nearly an order of magnitude to 4.5x10.sup.-6 for the 2036 close approach. Author Affiliation: (a) Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA (b) James Cook University, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Townsville, QLD 4811, Australia (c) United States Naval Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA Article History: Received 26 January 2010; Revised 29 May 2010; Accepted 2 June 2010