ECLIPSE-X: Plate-Scale Calibration as the Binding Constraint on Relativistic Astrometry with Spacecraft Navigation
Abstract
Precision stellar astrometry near the Sun can constrain the parametrized post-Newtonian (PPN) parameter gamma through gravitational light deflection. This study develops ECLIPSE-X, a localized multi-frame estimation architecture in which one persistent relativistic parameter is estimated simultaneously with frame-dependent spacecraft line-of-sight and roll states, separated by their differing spatial signatures and by the persistence of gamma across frames. The aim is not a competitive determination of gamma, but an assessment of whether such a joint solution and its formal covariance stay statistically valid under realistic astrometric model error. A synthetic field of 250 stars spanning 1.22-8 apparent solar radii is observed over 40 frames at 5-s cadence; weighted least squares estimates gamma with three navigation states per frame, and Schur-complement marginalization gives the formal uncertainty in gamma after navigation coupling. The nominal solution recovers gamma = 1.0001198167 with sigma_gamma = 3.075104e-4, and a 1000-realization ensemble confirms calibration. Perturbations unknown to the estimator identify plate-scale mismatch as the dominant failure mechanism: a 300-ppm scale error alone inflates the empirical-to-formal uncertainty ratio to 7126.6 with zero 1-sigma and 2-sigma coverage, against 2.18 for catalog-coordinate mismatch and 1.12 for a frame-coherent radial perturbation, while every realization converges numerically: convergence does not guarantee statistical validity. Augmenting the state with a plate-scale parameter restores consistency, at a fixed 21.2% cost in the precision of gamma set by the correlation between the two persistent parameters. A calibration sweep shows the unaugmented estimator is covariance-consistent only below sigma_p = 2.7884e-8, so the augmented state is a requirement, not a refinement, for near-Sun relativistic astrometric estimators.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{llanos2026eclipsex,
title = {{ECLIPSE-X: Plate-Scale Calibration as the Binding Constraint on Relativistic Astrometry with Spacecraft Navigation}},
author = {Pedro J. Llanos},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.36514},
eprint = {2609.36514},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36514},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - ECLIPSE-X: Plate-Scale Calibration as the Binding Constraint on Relativistic Astrometry with Spacecraft Navigation
AU - Pedro J. Llanos
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.36514
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36514
AB - Precision stellar astrometry near the Sun can constrain the parametrized post-Newtonian (PPN) parameter gamma through gravitational light deflection. This study develops ECLIPSE-X, a localized multi-frame estimation architecture in which one persistent relativistic parameter is estimated simultaneously with frame-dependent spacecraft line-of-sight and roll states, separated by their differing spatial signatures and by the persistence of gamma across frames. The aim is not a competitive determination of gamma, but an assessment of whether such a joint solution and its formal covariance stay statistically valid under realistic astrometric model error. A synthetic field of 250 stars spanning 1.22-8 apparent solar radii is observed over 40 frames at 5-s cadence; weighted least squares estimates gamma with three navigation states per frame, and Schur-complement marginalization gives the formal uncertainty in gamma after navigation coupling. The nominal solution recovers gamma = 1.0001198167 with sigma_gamma = 3.075104e-4, and a 1000-realization ensemble confirms calibration. Perturbations unknown to the estimator identify plate-scale mismatch as the dominant failure mechanism: a 300-ppm scale error alone inflates the empirical-to-formal uncertainty ratio to 7126.6 with zero 1-sigma and 2-sigma coverage, against 2.18 for catalog-coordinate mismatch and 1.12 for a frame-coherent radial perturbation, while every realization converges numerically: convergence does not guarantee statistical validity. Augmenting the state with a plate-scale parameter restores consistency, at a fixed 21.2% cost in the precision of gamma set by the correlation between the two persistent parameters. A calibration sweep shows the unaugmented estimator is covariance-consistent only below sigma_p = 2.7884e-8, so the augmented state is a requirement, not a refinement, for near-Sun relativistic astrometric estimators.
ER -