Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences (Jun 1995)
Software Development of High-Precision Ephemerides of Solar System
Abstract
We solved n-body problem about 9 plants, moon, and 4 minor planets with relativistic effect related to the basic equation of motion of the solar system. Perturbations including figure potential of the earth and the moon and solid earth tidal effect were considered on this relativistic equation of motion. The orientations employed precession and nutation for the earth, and lunar libration model with Eckert's lunar libration model based on J2000.0 were used for the moon. Finally, we developed heliocentric ecliptic position and velocity of each planet using this software package named the SSEG (Solar System Ephemerides Generator) by long-term (more than 100 years) simulation on CRAY-2S super computer, through testing each subroutine on personal computer and short-time (within 800days) running on SUN3/280 workstation. Epoch of input data JD2440400.5 were adopted in order to compare our results to the data archived from JPL's DE200 by Standish and Newhall. Above equation of motion was integrated numerically having 1-day step-size interval through 40,000 days (about 110 years long) as total computing interval. We obtained high-precision ephemerides of the planets with maximum error, less than ~2 x 10-8AU (≈±3km) compared with DE200 data(except for mars and moon).