Pulkovo Observations of the Major Planets, their Satellites and Pluto

Abstract

The paper presents the results of processing of positional observations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and their satellites, as well as Pluto, carried out at the Pulkovo Observatory, as well as at the Mountain Astronomical Station of the Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences (MAS CAO RAS) and at the Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory from the beginning of the 20th century to 2018. The observations were taken from the database of the Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences, with the exception of two groups of observations taken from the VizieR database. The processing was carried out using the planetary ephemerides EPM developed at the Institute of Applied Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as the ephemerides of the Galilean satellites and Neptune’s satellites and analytical theories of the satellites of Saturn and Uranus. During the processing, corrections were taken into account when switching from older star catalogs to modern ones, to which the observations were reduced. The results of a comparative analysis of the accuracy of determining planetary orbits using Pulkovo observations and without them are presented.