Precise Radio Source Positions from Mark III VLBI

These experiments resulted in 237681 acceptable pairs of group delay and phase delay rate observations. These have been used to derive positions of 182 extra-galactic radio sources with typical formal standard errors less than 1 mas.

The right ascension zero point of this reference frame has been aligned with the FK5 by using the optical positions of 28 extragalactic radio sources whose positions are on the FK5 system. Also included are the Mark III VLBI stations and a summary of the analysis configuration.