Enhancing the Accuracy of Numerical Integration of the Equations of Asteroid Motion with Perturbations from Major Planets and the Moon from the DE Ephemerides

Abstract

The discontinuous behavior of coordinates of planets and the Moon and their derivatives, which are determined from their modern ephemerides, at the boundaries of adjacent interpolation intervals is illustrated using the example of the DE436 ephemerides. The numerical integration of the equations of motion of two asteroids demonstrates that the integration accuracy increases by several orders of magnitude if the step of numerical integration is matched to the boundaries of ephemeris interpolation intervals. In addition, an algorithm for ephemeris smoothing at the boundaries of interpolation intervals is developed and applied in order to eliminate the jumps of coordinates and their first-order derivatives emerging in extended- and quadprecision calculations. This algorithm allows one to remove the jumps of coordinates and their derivatives up to any given order. It is demonstrated that the use of ephemerides smoothed to the first-order derivatives in quad-precision calculations increases the accuracy of numerical integration by ~10 orders of magnitude.