A new realization of the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) is presented based on the work achieved by a working group of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) mandated for this purpose. This new realization follows the initial realization of the ICRF completed in 1997 and its successor, ICRF2, adopted as a replacement in 2009. The new frame, referred to as ICRF3, is based on nearly 40 years of data acquired by very long baseline interferometry at the standard geodetic and astrometric radio frequencies (8.4 and 2.3 GHz), supplemented with data collected at higher radio frequencies (24 GHz and dual-frequency 32 and 8.4 GHz) over the past 15 years. State-of-the-art astronomical and geophysical modeling has been used to analyze these data and derive source positions. The modeling integrates, for the first time, the effect of the galactocentric acceleration of the solar system (directly estimated from the data) which, if not considered, induces significant deformation of the frame due to the data span. The new frame includes positions at 8.4 GHz for 4536 extragalactic sources. Of these, 303 sources, uniformly distributed on the sky, are identified as “defining sources” and as such serve to define the axes of the frame. Positions at 8.4 GHz are supplemented with positions at 24 GHz for 824 sources and at 32 GHz for 678 sources. In all, ICRF3 comprises 4588 sources, with three-frequency positions available for 600 of these. Source positions have been determined independently at each of the frequencies in order to preserve the underlying astrophysical content behind such positions. They are reported for epoch 2015.0 and must be propagated for observations at other epochs for the most accurate needs, accounting for the acceleration toward the Galactic center, which results in a dipolar proper motion field of amplitude 0.0058 milliarcsecond yr⁻¹(mas yr⁻¹). The frame is aligned onto the International Celestial Reference System to within the accuracy of ICRF2 and shows a median positional uncertainty of about 0.1 mas in right ascension and 0.2 mas in declination, with a noise floor of 0.03 mas in the individual source coordinates. A subset of 500 sources is found to have extremely accurate positions, in the range of 0.03–0.06 mas, at the traditional 8.4 GHz frequency. Comparing ICRF3 with the recently releasedGaiaCelestial Reference Frame 2 in the optical domain, there is no evidence for deformations larger than 0.03 mas between the two frames, in agreement with the ICRF3 noise level. Significant positional offsets between the three ICRF3 frequencies are detected for about 5% of the sources. Moreover, a notable fraction (22%) of the sources shows optical and radio positions that are significantly offset. There are indications that these positional offsets may be the manifestation of extended source structures. This third realization of the ICRF was adopted by the IAU at its 30th General Assembly in August 2018 and replaced the previous realization, ICRF2, on January 1, 2019.

The paper investigates the question of whether or not determinations of the distance between the Sun and the Galactic center R ₀ are affected by the so-called “bandwagon effect”, leading to selection effects in published data that tend to be close to expected values, as was suggested by some authors. It is difficult to estimate numerically a systematic uncertainty in R ₀ due to the bandwagon effect; however, it is highly probable that, even if widely accepted values differ appreciably from the true value, the published results should eventually approach the true value despite the bandwagon effect. This should be manifest as a trend in the published R ₀ data: if this trend is statistically significant, the presence of the bandwagon effect can be suspected in the data. Fifty two determinations of R ₀ published over the last 20 years were analyzed. These data reveal no statistically significant trend, suggesting they are unlikely to involve any systematic uncertainty due to the bandwagon effect. At the same time, the published data show a gradual and statistically significant decrease in the uncertainties in the R ₀ determinations with time.

A new version of the Optical Characteristics of Astrometric Radio Sources (OCARS) catalog is presented. This compiled catalog includes radio sources observed in different VLBI programs and experiments that result in source position determination, their redshift, and photometry in the visible and near-infrared bands. A cross-identification table between the OCARS and other catalogs is also provided. The status of the catalog as of 2018 September 7 is described in this paper. The OCARS catalog currently contains 6432 sources, of which 3895 have redshift data and 5479 have photometric data. Compared with the previous version, the current version has been enriched with extended redshift and photometry information, and cross-identification with several catalogs in radio, optical, infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray bands. The OCARS catalog is updated every few weeks on average to incorporate new data that appear in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), SIMBAD database, and in the literature.

A new method SREAG (spherical rectangular equal-area grid) is proposed to divide a spherical surface into equal-area cells. The method is based on dividing a sphere into latitudinal rings of near-constant width with further splitting of each ring into equal-area cells. It is simple in construction and use, and provides more uniform width of the latitudinal rings than other methods of equal-area pixelization of a spherical surface. The new method provides rectangular grid cells with latitude- and longitude-oriented boundaries, near-square cells in the equatorial rings, and the closest to uniform width of the latitudinal rings as compared with other equal-area isolatitudinal grids. The binned data is easy to visualize and interpret in terms of the longitude–latitude rectangular coordinate system, natural for astronomy and geodesy. Grids with an arbitrary number of rings and, consequently, a wide and theoretically unlimited range of cell size can be built by the proposed method. Comparison with other methods used in astronomical research showed the advantages of the new approach in the sense of uniformity of the ring width, a wider range of grid resolution, and simplicity of use.

Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is an international journal which publishes papers on all aspects of astronomy and astrophysics