Comparison of the four catalogues by pairs, the Hipparcos, new Hipparcos, EOC‐2 and IL, by using μδ for the common 1120 stars

We present comparison results of our Independent Latitude (IL) catalogue of μδ determinations for 1120 bright stars with the Hipparcos, new Hipparcos and Earth Orientation Catalogue (EOC-2) values. Also, we took into consideration the EOC3 and EOC4 (recent versions of EOC catalogues). Our μδ values are based on zenith telescope observations from seven Independent Latitude (IL) observatories. The IL measures are spanning a time baseline of up to 90 years which is the key advantage to the accurate determination of μδ. The short interval of the Hipparcos satellite observations is a disadvantage for a good accuracy of stellar proper motion, especially in the case of double and multiple stars. For this reason many astrometric catalogues have appeared after the publication of the Hipparcos including our IL catalogue. These catalogues are an appropriate combination of the Hipparcos satellite and ground-based data which yields more accurate stellar coordinates and/or their proper motions. Among various types of ground-based observations the latitude and universal time variations obtained from several million observations of stars reduced to the Hipparcos reference system were used for this purpose. These observations were obtained during almost the entire last century and were originally used to determine the Earth Orientation Parameters. It is also possible to use these data in the inverse task of checking the accuracy of stellar coordinates and/or their proper motions listed in the Hipparcos Catalogue. Such latitude and universal time variations data are the basis of the EOC and IL catalogues. In this paper, we computed the differences in μδ values between pairs of catalogues and analyzed the results to characterize the μδ errors for the four catalogues with a special focus on our IL catalogue. The standard errors of μδ for IL stars observed over more than 20 years are mostly smaller than or equal to the Hipparcos errors, and close to the accuracy level of the EOC-2 (EOC-3, EOC-4) and the new Hipparcos. The resulting investigations of errors of differences of μδ, show that all four catalogues have relatively small random and systematic errors which are close to each other meaning that the corresponding μδ values have a high accuracy. Our sample also contains detected double and multiple stars for which the effects of the orbital and proper motions are difficult to separate. The differences of μδ values for these stars generally exceed those obtained for single stars. Also, these discrepancies could be attributed to effect of possible, still unrecognized, astrometric binaries. These investigations about the proper motions and double stars are in line with the activity of the IAU Working Group on Astrometry by Small Ground-Based Telescopes. (© 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)