Computer simulating of stellar tracks for observations with the lunar polar telescope

Abstract

A brief description of targets and problems of the future Japanese project ILOM (In situ Lunar Orientation Measurement), which is planned to be realized as one of kinds of observations of lunar rotation at the second stage of SELENE-2 mission, is given in the article. One of the important elements of the project is placing of a small optical telescope on the lunar surface with the purpose to detect the lunar physical libration with high accuracy of 0.001 arc sec. Computer simulation of the future observations is being done with the purpose of their optimisation: effective placement of measuring system on the lunar surface and formation of scheduling of observations for monitoring the physical libration of the Moon. The results of the first stage of the simulation are presented in the paper. At this stage the software for the selection of stars and reduction of their coordinates onto the period of observations is developed, the tracks for the selected stars are constructed and analysed, their sensitivity to the internal characteristics of the lunar body, in the first place, to the selenopotential coefficients, is tested. Analyses of simulated stellar tracks observable from the lunar surface (in a polar zone) revealed a difference from daily parallels of stars in comparison with ground based observations. During one lunar day equal to 27.3 terrestrial days, a star moves along a spiral. In dependence on the longitude of the star, these spirals can be untwisted or twisted. In the latter case a star can describe a loop in the sky of the Moon during the observation period. The reason of such unusual astrometry phenomenon is the combination of the slow rotation of the Moon as compared with the Earth and the fast precession motion of the lunar pole (in comparison with precession motion of a terrestrial pole). Due to the physical libration the shifts of all tracks will be observed towards direction opposite the Earth. The tracks are sensitive to gravity model of the Moon and are different even for the most accurate modern gravity field models - LP150Q (Konopliv, 2000) and SGM100h (Matsumoto et al.; 2010). © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.