second i v s general meeting program（第二我v s大会程序）.docVIP

Second IVS General Meeting Abstracts Tsukuba, Japan Monday, February 4, 2002 Opening Ceremony (09:40-10:00) Shizuo Sato (Senior Vice-Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport) Takashi Iida (President, Communications Research Laboratory) 10:00 BREAK Session 1. VLBI: Precise and Consistent for Decades Chair: Fuji Takahashi 10:10 1-01. Welcome by IVS Chair and Chair’s Report Wolfgang Schlüter, Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geod?sie (BKG) 10:20 1-02. Coordinating Center Report Nancy Vandenberg, NVI, Inc./GSFC 10:30 1-03. The Essential Contribution of VLBI to Fundamental Astronomy (invited) Nicole Capitaine, Observatoire de Paris The adoption of the International Celestial Reference System ICRS based on VLBI observations of extragalactic radio sources, by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), since 1st January 1998, has open a new era for astronomy. The ICRS and the corresponding frame ICRF replaced the FK5 based on positions and proper motions of bright stars. According to its definition, the ICRS is such that the barycentric directions of distant extragalactic objects show no global rotation with respect to these objects. The old dream of astronomers of an absolute reference for measuring the angular motion of celestial bodies has thus become reality. This results in an historical abandonment of the link of the celestial reference system with the motion of the Earth which has to be taken into account by revising the current concepts of fundamental astronomy. IAU Resolutions adopted in 2000 provided new definitions for the celestial pole, Universal Time and the parameters to be used in the transformation between the celestial and terrestrial frames, in consistency with the properties of the ICRS. VLBI observations of Earth orientation referred to the ICRS provide very accurate determination of the actual celestial position of the pole and of the Earths rate of rotation. This has led to important improvements in the models for preces