Statistical analysis of astrometric errors for the most productive asteroid surveys

•Statistical analysis of 90% of asteroid CCD data.•Astrometric residuals of sites depend on epoch and magnitude.•New weighting scheme for orbit determination. We performed a statistical analysis of the astrometric errors for the major asteroid surveys. We analyzed the astrometric residuals as a func...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Icarus (New York, N.Y. 1962) N.Y. 1962), 2017-11, Vol.296, p.139-149
Main Authors: Vereš, Peter, Farnocchia, Davide, Chesley, Steven R., Chamberlin, Alan B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asteroids
Astrometry
Orbit determination
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Summary:•Statistical analysis of 90% of asteroid CCD data.•Astrometric residuals of sites depend on epoch and magnitude.•New weighting scheme for orbit determination. We performed a statistical analysis of the astrometric errors for the major asteroid surveys. We analyzed the astrometric residuals as a function of observation epoch, observed brightness and rate of motion, finding that astrometric errors are larger for faint observations and some stations improved their astrometric quality over time. Based on this statistical analysis we develop a new weighting scheme to be used when performing asteroid orbit determination. The proposed weights result in ephemeris predictions that can be conservative by a factor as large as 1.5. However, the new scheme is robust with respect to outliers and handles the larger errors for faint detections.
ISSN:0019-1035
1090-2643
DOI:10.1016/j.icarus.2017.05.021