Rotational Motion of Celestial Bodies in the Relativistic Framework

Abstract

There are several important reasons to consider relativistic effects in rotational motion of celestial bodies. General Relativity is now recommended by the International Astronomical Union and International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics as a theoretical framework for modeling of high-precision observational data. On the other hand, various geodynamical observations provide data which are widely used for testing General Relativity itself.In Newtonian mechanics it is well known how to describe rotational motion of an extended body. In General Relativity this is a rather subtle issue. The concept of a precessing extended rigid body in general relativity encounters fundamental difficulties and cannot be introduced even in the first post-Newtonian approximation. From a practical point of view, however, the rotational motion of the Earth even at the Newtonian level is defined operationally through the time-dependence of geocentric quasi-inertial coordinates of observing sites. An analogous operational definition can be applied in general relativity. To this end, we need a set of physically adequate reference systems.