The most important measurement for radio astrometry is that of the actual fringe
phase of a connected-element interferometer (or similarly the group delay in VLBI). Let
be the angle between the reference direction and the meridian plane of a given
interferometer baseline. The phase is then defined by
![]() |
(20.4) |
![]() |
(20.5) |
Accounting for uncertainties in the baseline and source position vectors the actual phase is
![]() |
(20.6) |
![]() |
(20.7) |
![]() |
(20.8) |
The two limiting cases
, and
correspond to
those where we either calibrate the baseline or determine the exact source position.
In the first case the source coordinates are perfectly known and by comparing the
observed phase with the reference phase
one determines
and hence the true baseline
. The reference
sources observed for baseline calibration are bright quasars or galactic nuclei whose
absolute coordinates are accurately known. The most highly accurate source coordinates are
those of the radio sources used to realize by VLBI the International Celestial Reference
Frame (ICRF); distribution of coordinate errors are below one milliarcsecond. However,
the ICRF catalogue is insufficient for phase and baseline calibrations of millimeter-wave
arrays because most sources are not bright enough in the millimeter-wave domain. The IRAM
calibration source list is thus a combination of several catalogues of compact radio
sources. Today, the Plateau de Bure Interferometer catalogue of calibration sources is
based mostly on compact radio sources from the Jodrell Bank - VLA Astrometric Survey
(JVAS - [Patnaik et al 1992], [Browne et al. 1998],
[Wilkinson et al. 1998]).