Precise Positions of Five Major Uranian Satellites During 2008–2014 Based on Gaia EDR3*

Abstract

Abstract The five major Uranian satellites (Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, and Miranda) were observed by a 1.56 m telescope at Sheshan Station of Shanghai Astronomical Observatory during 2008–2014 and a total of 1915 positions of these five satellites were presented in this paper. Since all five satellites are close to Uranus, their positions are affected by the uneven background, which is caused by the halo of Uranus. The median filtering method is used to remove the influence of the halo of the bright Uranus, which also made the rate of target detection increase by 30%–100%, especially for Miranda. Gaia EDR3 is used as the reference catalog when calculating positions of the five satellites. A comparison between our positions with the theoretical positions of the satellites from IMCCE is given. Such precise positions over a long time will be very helpful to improve the orbit parameters of the five major Uranian satellites.