Measuring the Mass of Solar System Planets Using Pulsar Timing
Access Status
Authors
Date
2010Type
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Source Title
ISSN
School
Remarks
Copyright © 2010 The American Astronomical Society ("AAS")-The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ) Champion, D.J., 2010 ApJS 720, L201-L205.
Collection
Abstract
High-precision pulsar timing relies on a solar system ephemeris in order to convert times of arrival (TOAs) of pulses measured at an observatory to the solar system barycenter. Any error in the conversion to the barycentric TOAs leads to a systematic variation in the observed timing residuals; specifically, an incorrect planetary mass leads to a predominantly sinusoidal variation having a period and phase associated with the planet’s orbital motion about the Sun. By using an array of pulsars (PSRs J0437−4715, J1744−1134, J1857+0943, J1909−3744), the masses of the planetary systems from Mercury to Saturn have been determined. These masses are consistent with the best-known masses determined by spacecraft observations, with the mass of the Jovian system, 9.547921(2) × 10−4M , being significantly more accurate than the mass determined from the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, and consistent with but less accurate than the value from the Galileo spacecraft. While spacecraft are likely to produce the most accurate measurements for individual solar system bodies, the pulsar technique is sensitive to planetary system masses and has the potential to provide the most accurate values of these masses for some planets.
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Champion, D.; Hobbs, G.; Manchester, R.; Edwards, R.; Backer, D.; Bailes, M.; Bhat, Ramesh; Burke-Spolaor, S.; Coles, W.; Demorest, P.; Ferdman, R.; Folkner, W.; Hotan, A.; Kramer, M.; Lommen, A.; Nice, D.; Purver, M.; Sarkissian, J.; Stairs, I.; Van Straten, W.; Verbiest, J.; Yardley, D. (2011)High-precision pulsar timing relies on a solar system ephemeris in order to convert times of arrival (TOAs) of pulses measured at an observatory to the solar system barycenter. Any error in the conversion to the barycentric ...
-
Caballero, R.; Guo, Y.; Lee, K.; Lazarus, P.; Champion, D.; Desvignes, G.; Kramer, M.; Plant, K.; Arzoumanian, Z.; Bailes, M.; Bassa, C.; Bhat, Ramesh; Brazier, A.; Burgay, M.; Burke-Spolaor, S.; Chamberlin, S.; Chatterjee, S.; Cognard, I.; Cordes, J.; Dai, S.; Demorest, P.; Dolch, T.; Ferdman, R.; Fonseca, E.; Gair, J.; Garver-Daniels, N.; Gentile, P.; Gonzalez, M.; Graikou, E.; Guillemot, L.; Hobbs, G.; Janssen, G.; Karuppusamy, R.; Keith, M.; Kerr, M.; Lam, M.; Lasky, P.; Lazio, T.; Levin, L.; Liu, K.; Lommen, A.; Lorimer, D.; Lynch, R.; Madison, D.; Manchester, R.; McKee, J.; McLaughlin, M.; McWilliams, S.; Mingarelli, C.; Nice, D.; Osiowski, S.; Palliyaguru, N.; Pennucci, T.; Perera, B.; Perrodin, D.; Possenti, A.; Ransom, S.; Reardon, D.; Sanidas, S.; Sesana, A.; Shaifullah, G.; Shannon, Ryan; Siemens, X.; Simon, J.; Spiewak, R.; Stairs, I.; Stappers, B.; Stinebring, D.; Stovall, K.; Swiggum, J.; Taylor, S.; Theureau, G.; Tiburzi, C. (2018)Pulsar-timing analyses are sensitive to errors in the Solar-system ephemerides (SSEs) that timing models utilize to estimate the location of the Solar-system barycentre, the quasi-inertial reference frame to which all ...
-
Deng, X.; Hobbs, G.; You, X.; Li, M.; Keith, M.; Shannon, Ryan; Coles, W.; Manchester, R.; Zheng, J.; Yu, X.; Gao, D.; Wu, X.; Chen, D. (2013)We demonstrate how observations of pulsars can be used to help navigate a spacecraft travelling in the solar system. We make use of archival observations of millisecond pulsars from the Parkes radio telescope in order to ...