Abstract
Recent research in the department has involved determining the value of lunar observations in the determination of geodetic and selenodetic control.
A fundamental consideration in the research is the determination of the orientation of the Earth in the celestial coordinate system. Classical reductions for precession and nutation can be expected to be consistent with the present day observations, however, corrections to the classical theory are difficult to model due to the large number of coefficients involved. Consequently, a portion of the research has been devoted to numerically integrating the Eulerian equations of motion for a rigid Earth and considering the six initial conditions of the integration as unknowns.
Comparison of the three adjusted Eulerian angles from the numerical integration over 1000 daysindicates agreement with classical theory to within 0.003 seconds ofarc.
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This work was performed under NASA Contract No. NAS 9-13093.
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Fajemirokun, F.A., Hotter, F.D. & Mueller, I. Orientation of the Earth by numerical integration. Bull. Geodesique 50, 109–129 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02522311
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02522311