Comparative analysis of the positional accuracy of CCD measurements of small bodies in the solar system software CoLiTec and Astrometrica

Abstract

The CoLiTec software for the automated search for small celestial objects of the solar system on a series of CCD frames has been developed within the Ukrainian virtual observatory project. Four comets and more than a thousand asteroids were discovered using the software. It was also used to send approximately 700000 positional CCD measurements to the Minor Planet Center. In this paper, accuracy factors of positional CCD measurements using the CoLiTec software are analyzed according to data from the Minor Planet Center. The comparative analysis of these factors according to the results of the processing of the same frames using CoLiTec and Astrometrica software is also conducted. In the case of low signal to noise ratios, the standard deviation of positional CCD measurements using the Astrometrica software is 30–50% greater than that of the CoLiTec software.