射电天文研究组知识库

To accurately link the radio and optical Celestial Reference Frames (CRFs) at optical bright end, i.e. with GaiaG-band magnitude less than or similar to 13, increasing number and improving sky distribution of radio stars with accurate astrometric parameters from both Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and Gaia measurements are mandatory. We selected two radio stars HD 199178 and AR Lacertae as the target for a pilot program for the frame link, using the Very Long Baseline Array at 15 GHz at six epochs spanning about 1 yr, to measure their astrometric parameters. The measured parallax of HD 199178 is 8.949 +/- 0.059 mas and the proper motion is mu(alpha)cos delta = 26.393 +/- 0.093 and mu(delta) = -0.950 +/- 0.083 mas yr(-1), while the parallax of AR Lac is 23.459 +/- 0.094 mas and the proper motion is mu alpha(c)os delta= -51.906 +/- 0.138 and mu(delta) = 46.732 +/- 0.131 mas yr(-1). Our VLBI measured astrometric parameters have accuracies about 4-5 times better than the corresponding historic VLBI measurements and comparable accuracies with those from Gaia, validating the feasibility of frame link using radio stars. With the updated astrometric parameters for these two stars, there is a similar to 25 per cent reduction of the uncertainties on the Y-axis for both orientation and spin parameters.