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Orbit determination with the two-body integrals

Orbit determination with the two-body integrals We investigate a method to compute a finite set of preliminary orbits for solar system bodies using the first integrals of the Kepler problem. This method is thought for the applications to the modern sets of astrometric observations, where often the information contained in the observations allows only to compute, by interpolation, two angular positions of the observed body and their time derivatives at a given epoch; we call this set of data attributable. Given two attributables of the same body at two different epochs we can use the energy and angular momentum integrals of the two-body problem to write a system of polynomial equations for the topocentric distance and the radial velocity at the two epochs. We define two different algorithms for the computation of the solutions, based on different ways to perform elimination of variables and obtain a univariate polynomial. Moreover we use the redundancy of the data to test the hypothesis that two attributables belong to the same body (linkage problem). It is also possible to compute a covariance matrix, describing the uncertainty of the preliminary orbits which results from the observation error statistics. The performance of this method has been investigated by using a large set of simulated observations of the Pan-STARRS project. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy Springer Journals

Orbit determination with the two-body integrals

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References (6)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
Subject
Physics; Mathematics, general; Astronomy, Observations and Techniques; Astrophysics and Astroparticles; Dynamical Systems and Ergodic Theory
ISSN
0923-2958
eISSN
1572-9478
DOI
10.1007/s10569-010-9271-9
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

We investigate a method to compute a finite set of preliminary orbits for solar system bodies using the first integrals of the Kepler problem. This method is thought for the applications to the modern sets of astrometric observations, where often the information contained in the observations allows only to compute, by interpolation, two angular positions of the observed body and their time derivatives at a given epoch; we call this set of data attributable. Given two attributables of the same body at two different epochs we can use the energy and angular momentum integrals of the two-body problem to write a system of polynomial equations for the topocentric distance and the radial velocity at the two epochs. We define two different algorithms for the computation of the solutions, based on different ways to perform elimination of variables and obtain a univariate polynomial. Moreover we use the redundancy of the data to test the hypothesis that two attributables belong to the same body (linkage problem). It is also possible to compute a covariance matrix, describing the uncertainty of the preliminary orbits which results from the observation error statistics. The performance of this method has been investigated by using a large set of simulated observations of the Pan-STARRS project.

Journal

Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical AstronomySpringer Journals

Published: May 4, 2010

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