The Use of the Hubble Space Telescope for Global Reference Frame Work

Abstract

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) will have the capability of making relative astrometric measurements with an accuracy of four to ten times better than similar ground based measurements. The instruments of choice will be the Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS’s). Details of the instrumentation have been given elsewhere (c.f. Jefferys, 1980). Each FGS consists of two interferometer detectors which look at a small aperture located within a larger field of view (FOV). The raw data consist of encoder readings, from “star selectors”, and error signals derived from the interferometer transfer functions. The star selector positions determine the position of the small aperture within the pickles. The precision is always less than 0.001 arcsec, with an expected accuracy of 0.002 to 0.003 arcsec per observation. Under optimum conditions, the best expected accuracy is 0.0016 arcsec per observation. An observation will consist of the relative positions of several objects in one pickle. Thus the highest accuracy observations will be relative observations within a relatively small field of view.