Apparent close approaches between near-Earth asteroids and quasars. Precise astrometry and frame linking

Reproduced with permission. Copyright ESO. Article published by EDP Sciences and available at www.aanda.org.International audienceAims. We investigate the link between the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) and the dynamical reference frame realized by the ephemerides of the Solar System bodies. Methods. We propose a procedure that implies a selection of events for asteroids with accurately determined orbits crossing the CCD field containing selected quasars. Using a Bulirsch-Stoer numerical integrator, we constructed 8-years (2010-2018) ephemerides for a set of 836 numbered near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). We searched for close encounters (within a typical field of view of groundbased telescopes) between our selected set of asteroids and quasars with high-accuracy astrometric positions extracted from the Large Quasars Astrometric Catalog (LQAC). Results. In the designated period (2010-2018), we found a number of 2924, 14 257, and 6972 close approaches (within 10') between asteroids with a minimum solar elongation value of 60◦and quasars from the ICRF-Ext2, the Very Large Baseline Array Calibrator Survey (VLBA-CS), and the Very Large Array (VLA), respectively. This large number of close encounters provides the observational basis needed to investigate the link between the dynamical reference frame and the ICRF