The INPOP10a planetary ephemeris and its applications in fundamental physics

Abstract

International audienceCompared to the previous INPOP versions, the INPOP10a planetary and lunar ephemeris has several improvements. For the planets of our solar system, no big change was brought in the dynamics but improvements were implemented in the fitting process, the data sets used in the fit and in the selection of fitted parameters. We report here the main characteristics of the planetary part of INPOP10a like the fit of the product of the Solar mass with the gravitational constant (GM$_{\odot}$) instead of the astronomical unit. Determinations of PPN parameters as well as adjustments of the Sun J2 and of asteroid masses are also presented. New advances of nodes and perihelia of planets were also estimated and are given here. As for INPOP08, INPOP10a provides to the user, positions and velocities of the planets, the moon, the rotation angles of the Earth and the Moon as well as TT-TDB chebychev polynomials at http://www.imcce.fr/inpo

Planet X revamped after the discovery of the Sedna-like object 2012 VP113?

“…Iorio (2012) (Iorio 2012), it is straightforward to refine such estimates by using the latest results on ∆̟ obtained with more recent planetary ephemerides (Fienga et al 2011;Pitjeva & Pitjev 2013). From Figure 1 of Iorio (2012), it can be noticed that, for a given value of m X and by keeping the ecliptic latitude β X fixed to some low values, the combined use of the perihelia of Earth, Mars and Saturn allows to constrain effectively d X for practically all values of the ecliptic longitude λ X .…”

Chaotic diffusion of the Vesta family induced by close encounters with massive asteroids

“…Indeed, if we add the masses of the 11 asteroids of our simulation we obtain a total mass of 8.36 × 10 −10 M . The estimated total mass contained in the main asteroid belt is about 15 × 10 −10 M (obtained from INPOP10a fits, Fienga et al 2011), while Krasinsky et al (2002) gave 18 × 10 −10 M . The most massive asteroid in the main belt is Ceres with 4.76 × 10 −10 M , thus the remaining mass (not considered in our simulation) represents about 1.5 to 2 times the mass of Ceres.…”

New analytical planetary theories VSOP2013 and TOP2013

“…An iterative method is then used for the following computations. -The integration constants x 0 j and λ 0 j and the mean motions n j are determinated by fitting, over the time span from 1890 to 2000, the solutions to the numerical integrations DE405 (Standish 1998) for the solutions VSOP2010 and TOP2010 or INPOP10a (Fienga et al 2011) for VSOP2013 and TOP2013. We note that the numerical formulae given in the following sections will generally relate to the solutions fitted to INPOP10a.…”

“…The TOP theories are solutions for the motion of the four major planets and are accurate over several thousands of years. Currently, the ephemerides of the planets are obtained mainly from very precise numerical integrations fitted to the most recent observations: the European ephemerides Intégration Numérique Planétaire de l'Observatoire de Paris (INPOP, Fienga et al 2008, 2011, the American ephemerides Development Ephemeris (DE; e.g. Standish 1998; or more VSOP2013 and TOP2013 are available by ftp on: ftp.imcce.fr/pub/ephem/planets/vsop2013 and ftp.imcce.fr/pub/ephem/planets/top2013.…”

“…We then built VSOP2013 and TOP2013, fitted to INPOP10a (Fienga et al 2011). This paper particularly deals with VSOP2013 and TOP2013.…”