Abstract
Ever since man tried to trace the motion of celestial objects or to identify their positions, he referred to stars as fiducial points This meant that one had to measure the positions of these reference stars with respect to a system of spherical coordinates. The choice of the axes was imposed by the Earth’s rotation: the celestial equator and the meridian half plane crossing it at the vernal equinox point. Traditionally the equatorial system is direct, the Z-axis pointing towards North. The two angles are the right ascension α and the declination δ (fig. 1).
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Kovalevsky, J. (1989). Stellar Reference Frames. In: Kovalevsky, J., Mueller, I.I., Kolaczek, B. (eds) Reference Frames. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 154. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0933-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0933-5_2
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