Ultra-rapid earth rotation determination with VLBI during CONT11 and CONT14
Journal article, 2017

We present earth rotation results from the ultra-rapid operations during the continuous VLBI campaigns CONT11 and CONT14. The baseline Onsala--Tsukuba, i.e., using two out of the 13 and 17 stations contributing to CONT11 and CONT14, respectively, was used to derive UT1-UTC in ultra-rapid mode during the ongoing campaigns. The latency between a new observation and a new UT1-UTC result was less than 10 min for more than 95{\%} of the observations. The accuracy of the derived ultra-rapid UT1-UTC results is approximately a factor of three worse than results from optimized one-baseline sessions and/or complete analysis of large VLBI networks. This is, however, due to that the one-baseline picked from the CONT campaigns is not optimized for earth rotation determination. Our results prove that the 24/7 operation mode planned for VGOS, the next-generation VLBI system, is possible already today. However, further improvements in data connectivity of stations and correlators as well in the automated analysis are necessary to realize the ambitious VGOS plans.

Earth rotation parameter

VGOS

24/7 mode

Ultra-rapid operations

UT1-UTC

VLBI

Author

Rüdiger Haas

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Space Geodesy and Geodynamics

Thomas Hobiger

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Space Geodesy and Geodynamics

Shinobu Kurihara

Geospatial Information Authority of Japan

Tetsuya Hara

Geospatial Information Authority of Japan

Journal of Geodesy

0949-7714 (ISSN) 1432-1394 (eISSN)

Vol. 91 7 831-837

Subject Categories

Other Earth and Related Environmental Sciences

Roots

Basic sciences

Infrastructure

Onsala Space Observatory

DOI

10.1007/s00190-016-0974-x

More information

Latest update

3/3/2020 1