How much can Galactic aberration impact the link between radio (ICRF) and optical (GCRF) reference frames

Abstract

The highly-accurate optical reference frame GCRF (Gaia Celestial Reference Frame) is expected to be available in several years. By the same time, a new version of radio reference frame ICRF (International Celestial Reference Frame) will be also published. The link of GCRF to ICRF will be defined by means of computation of the orientation angles between the two frames using the common extragalactic objects observed in both radio (VLBI) and optics (Gaia). Taking into account the expected accuracy of ICRF and GCRF of the first tens microarcseconds, the link between them should be defined at a microarcsecond level, which requires using the most accurate algorithms and models. One of such models is the Galactic aberration in proper motions, which is not included in the data processing yet. In this paper its impact on the ICRF-Gaia link is estimated. Preliminary results showed that this impact is at a level of about 1 microarcsecond.