Applied general relativity

General Relativity in modern Astronomical Reference Systems

For today's astronomical high precision measurements the problems of relativistic effects in space-time reference systems are of fundamental importance. In practice, e.g. the multitude of time-scales is very important: TCG (geocentric coordinate time), TT (terrestrial time), TAI (international atomic time), TCB (barycentric coordinate time) oder TDB (dynamic barycentric coordinate time). Also for the astronomical quasi-inertial systems it is of fundamental importance to distinguish between the barycentric (BCRS) and geo-centric (GCRS) celestial reference system.

Technological aspects of Einstein's Gravitational Theory

Here we consider methods of astronomical geodesy, like GPS, SLR, LLR or VLBI, in the context of Einstein's gravitational theory.