On Astronomical Atmospheric Refraction

Through a comparison between the series expression and mapping function expression of the astronomical refraction, we believe that, as far as a specific atmospheric refraction model is concerned, the computational accuracy is not lower in the former than in the latter, and that the convergence is poorer in the theoretically derived series expression, because of the different approximations made. From an analysis of the method of generating function of the atmospheric refraction mapping function it is considered that this kind of method can not embody the characteristics of geophysics and atmospheric physics. It is pointed out from the comparison that the atmospheric refraction model which is constructed by adopting the specific atmospheric distribution of a certain place does not apply to all other places and cannot be used to evaluate the other atmospheric refraction models. For improving the correction accuracy the key lies in the adoption of an effective method by which the instantaneous refraction values at different positions are directly determined to construct a local, position-dependent model of atmospheric refraction observation.