A novel approach for the direct estimation of the instantaneous Earth rotation velocity

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Titov, Oleg
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866912468708622336
author Titov, Oleg
author_facet Titov, Oleg
contents Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) measures two standard observables: group delay and fringe frequency (delay rate). While group delay is widely used to estimate a broad range of geodetic and astrometric parameters, fringe frequency has, to date, been largely ignored. Here, we show that the fringe frequency is a unique tool for direct estimation of the instantaneous Earth angular rotation velocity, which is not accessible with the group delay alone. We estimate the magnitude of the Earth angular rotation velocity using a 30-year set of VLBI data and obtain daily estimates of X and Y angles linking the Instantaneous Rotation Pole (IRP) and the International Celestial Reference System (ICRS) pole. The plain least-squares method was applied to analyse the fringe frequency available from routine geodetic VLBI observations. We estimate three components of the Earth rotation vector on a daily basis with a formal error of 1 prad/s in relative units, or better, if a large international VLBI network is at work. The newly obtained values can be used to monitor the Earth rotation irregularity in parallel to the traditional length-of-day (LOD) values and to directly assess the modern precession-nutation theory.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_04643
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A novel approach for the direct estimation of the instantaneous Earth rotation velocity
Titov, Oleg
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) measures two standard observables: group delay and fringe frequency (delay rate). While group delay is widely used to estimate a broad range of geodetic and astrometric parameters, fringe frequency has, to date, been largely ignored. Here, we show that the fringe frequency is a unique tool for direct estimation of the instantaneous Earth angular rotation velocity, which is not accessible with the group delay alone. We estimate the magnitude of the Earth angular rotation velocity using a 30-year set of VLBI data and obtain daily estimates of X and Y angles linking the Instantaneous Rotation Pole (IRP) and the International Celestial Reference System (ICRS) pole. The plain least-squares method was applied to analyse the fringe frequency available from routine geodetic VLBI observations. We estimate three components of the Earth rotation vector on a daily basis with a formal error of 1 prad/s in relative units, or better, if a large international VLBI network is at work. The newly obtained values can be used to monitor the Earth rotation irregularity in parallel to the traditional length-of-day (LOD) values and to directly assess the modern precession-nutation theory.
title A novel approach for the direct estimation of the instantaneous Earth rotation velocity
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04643