Scientific Rationale
These Journées will be the twentieth conference in this series whose main purpose is to provide a forum for advanced discussion in the fields of space and time reference systems, Earth rotation, solar system ephemerides, astrometry and time.

The Journées 2010 will be focused on the issues related to the recent developments and new challenges in astronomical space and time reference systems and their relativistic aspects, astrometric catalogs, Earth orientation, astronomical constants and numerical standards, planetary ephemerides and modern astrometry.

There will be presentations and discussions related to the IAU Working Groups, such as "Numerical Standards for Fundamental astronomy" (NSFA), or Division 1 commissions.

There will be a special session for presentating the latest developments in the solar system ephemerides and comparing details in those ephemerides.
This session will be organized in coordination with IAU Commission 4. It would require 1) the participation (as invited speakers) of the providers of the solar system ephemerides that are expected to be of comparable accuracy (i.e. JPL, EPM and INPOP) and 2) the presentation by one or several external speakers with experience in this area, who would have to report on the comparison of those ephemerides (regarding hypotheses, models, treatment, estimated parameters, etc. used in the ephemerides). This was a project suggested by George Kaplan for IAU Commission 4 during the C4 meeting at the latest IAU GA.

Latest update: 12/06/2010