The K-Band (24 GHz) Celestial Reference Frame Determined from Very Long Baseline Interferometry Sessions Conducted Over the Past 20 Years

Abstract

The third realization of the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF3) was adopted in August 2018 and includes positions of extragalactic objects at three frequencies: 8.4 GHz, 24 GHz, and 32 GHz. In this paper, we present celestial reference frames estimated from Very Long Baseline Interferometry measurements at K-band (24 GHz) including data until June 2022. The data set starts in May 2002 and currently consists of more than 120 24h observing sessions performed over the past 20 years. Since the publication of ICRF3, the additional observations of the sources during the last four years allow maintenance of the celestial reference frame and more than 200 additional radio sources ensure an expansion of the frame. A study of the presented solutions is carried out helping us to understand systematic differences between the astrometric catalogs and moving us towards a better next ICRF solution. We compare K-band solutions (VIE-K-2022b and USNO-K-2022July05) computed by two analysts with two independent software packages (VieVS and Calc/Solve) and describe the differences in the solution strategy. We assess the systematic differences using vector spherical harmonics and describe the reasons for the most prominent ones.