Inaccuracies Affecting the Calculation of Orbital Elements

Milos Tichy(1,2), Michaela Honkova(1,3), Jana Ticha(1), Michal Kocer(1)

(1) Klet Observatory, Zatkovo nabrezi 4, CZ-370 01 Ceske Budejovice South Bohemia, Czech Republic
(2) Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Department of Advanced Geodesy, Prague, Czech Republic
(3) Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Enginnering, Institute of Mathematics, Brno, Czech Republic

Abstract.
The quality of orbital elements determination, of both minor planets and satellites, depends on the quality of the input data. This paper describes the basic difficulties of obtaining reliable input data for such calculations.

The orbital elements determination is essentially calculated from precise astrometric data. Each measurement is determined with its own accuracy, which depends on several factors - time, topocentric coordinates, quality of used astrometric catalog, pixel size of CCD detector, astronomical seeing, quality and speed of CCD shutter, computational method of coordinates determination and also of orbit calculation.


Presented at 2013 IAA Planetary Defense Conference, Flagstaff, AZ, USA, 2013, (submitted to Experimental Astronomy)
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