VLBI measurement of the secular aberration drift

Understand

While analyzing decades of very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) data, we detected the secular aberration drift of the extragalatic radio source proper motions caused by the rotation of the Solar System barycenter around the Galactic center.

• Our results agree with the predicted estimate to be 4-6 micro arcseconds per year ({\mu}as/yr) towards {\alpha} = 266\circ and {\delta} = -29\circ.
• In addition, we tried to detect the quadrupole systematics of the velocity field.
• The analysis method consisted of three steps.