A general relativistic model for the light propagation in the gravitational field of the Solar System: the dynamical case

Abstract

Modern astrometry is based on angular measurements at the micro-arcsecond level. At this accuracy a fully general relativistic treatment of the data reduction is required. This paper concludes a series of articles dedicated to the problem of relativistic light propagation, presenting the final microarcsecond version of a relativistic astrometric model which enable us to trace back the light path to its emitting source throughout the non-stationary gravity field of the moving bodies in the Solar System. The previous model is used as test-bed for numerical comparisons to the present one. Here we also test different versions of the computer code implementing the model at different levels of complexity to start exploring the best trade-off between numerical efficiency and the micro-arcsecond accuracy needed to be reached.

40 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication on The Astrophysical Journal. Manuscript prepared with AASLaTeX macros v.5.2

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• Light propagation in 2PN approximation in the monopole and quadrupole field of a body at rest: Initial value problem
• Gravitational wave effects on astrometric observables
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