Inverse Multview I: Multi-Calibrator inverse phase referencing for Microarcsecond VLBI Astrometry

Abstract

Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) astrometry is a well established technique for achieving $\pm 10\mu$as parallax accuracies at frequencies well above 10~GHz. At lower frequencies, uncompensated interferometer delays associated with the ionosphere play the dominant role in limiting the astrometric accuracy. Multiview is a novel VLBI calibration method, which uses observations of multiple quasars to accurately model and remove time-variable, directional-dependent changes to the interferometer delay. Here we extend the Multiview technique by phase referencing data to the target source ("inverse Multiview") and test its performance. Multiple observations with a four-antenna VLBI array operating at 8.3~GHz show single-epoch astrometric accuracies near $20\mu$as for target-reference quasar separations up to about 7 degrees. This represents an improvement in astrometric accuracy by up to an order of magnitude compared to standard phase referencing.

11 pages, 5 figures

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• The Radio Parallax of the Crab Pulsar: A First VLBI Measurement Calibrated with Giant Pulses
• Inverse MultiView II: Microarcsecond Trigonometric Parallaxes for Southern Hemisphere 6.7~GHz Methanol Masers G232.62+00.99 and G323.74$-$00.26
• On the Structure of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm in the Inner Milky Way
• VLBI Astrometry of Radio Stars to Link Radio and Optical Celestial Reference Frames: Observing Strategies
• Dynamical masses of YSOs with the VLBA: DYNAMO VLBA: Trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions of YSOs in Orion
• The Readiness of EVN Telescopes for the SKA-VLBI Era
• Serial MultiView: an efficient approach to mitigating atmospheric spatial-structure errors for VLBI astrometry