MPC aperture timing accuracy

[daniel482]

Howdy,
I am completing a uni project investigating a timing error on a telescope. at the moment I have been tracking GNSS satellites to determine the cross track and along track timing errors, however the MPC outputs i have received from multi aperture tracking only states the time to the precision of seconds which isnt accurate enough for precise calculations of the RA and DEC of where the satellite im tracking actually is. But the FIT header however does have this precision to 0.001 seconds.

The website I have been using https://projectpluto.com/cgi-bin/gps/list_gps.cgi accepts MPC and also ADES which is in XML or PSV, I havent been able to work out if AIJ can output ADES, as it is reported that this format is more accurate. Astrometrica however does output ADES, but the plate solving hasn't been working very well for me.

For reference the satellite I have been working on is Navstar 78, in which i have a stack of 40 FIT's, and the sat has been capture in slews of 4 to 5 images per slew.

If anyone has any suggestions as to if there is a setting somewhere i can change or another way I could achieve greater time precision, that would be great.

Cheers,

Daniel.

[karenacollins]

Hi Daniel,

Currently AIJ only supports the standard MPC time precision of 0.00001 days (which is a precision of 0.864 seconds). The MPC supports one more decimal point of precision in the time, which would give a time precision of 0.0864 seconds). Would that be enough to make a difference for you? If so, we could add an option to the MPC setup panel to allow the user to select the higher time precision of 0.000001 days.

We do not currently support ADES format.

Karen