ASTROLABE PHOTOELECTRIC PAII. AN EXPERIENCE OF 15 YEARS OF COOPERATION

E, ALONSO; A, PACHECO; E, ACTIS; R, PODESTÁ; A, GONZALEZ; G, GOMEZ; W, MANRIQUE; J, ALACORIA; L, PEÑALOSA; R, PETRUCCI; E, JOFRE; P, TEJADA; F, DUPLANCIC; R, PETRUZZI; S, MOLINA; W, ZEZHI; Q, QIYUANG; Z, ZHIFANG; W, HONGI; L, LIZHI; Z, FAN MIAO; L, WEIDONG; G, SHAO

Rio de Janeiro

Congreso; Reunión Internacional de Astronomía, Rio de Janeiro 2009; 2009

International Astronomy Union

Following a cooperationagreement between the Chinese Academy of Sciences, CONICET, La Plata NationalUniversity and the San Juan National University, on February 1992, thePhotoelectric Astrolabe Mk2 (PA2). Was placed at the Félix Aguilar AstronomicalObservatory in San Juan (Argentina). This instrument, designed and built inNanjing (China), is fully automatic and can observe stars brighter than11.5apparent magnitude. Similar instruments are simultaneously operated in China(Beijing, Shanghai and Yunnan) in order to obtain homogeneous Star Cataloguesof great precision and extended to faint stars. It also brings secondaryresults as Catalogues of Optic Radio Sources, Planets, Minor Planets, Coordinatesof the Instantaneous Pole and Earth Rotation Parameters. Some results obtainedduring these 15 years are: the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd San Juan PhotoelectricAstrolabe Catalogues, which are referred to the Southern Hemisphere. These havebeen afterwards related to those observed in the Northern Hemisphere (China),producing the 1st Global Astrolabe Star Catalogue, which contains more than10.000 stars with declinations from +80 to ? 80 degrees. Nowadays we areperforming Astrogeodynamics Studies which consist in the analysis of anomaliesof Time-Latitude variations, and then relate them to big earthquakes occurredin San Juan during that period.