orbital phase calculations should use barycentric times

nanograv / PINT

PINT is not TEMPO3 -- Software for high-precision pulsar timing

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orbital phase calculations should use barycentric times #475

Closed scottransom closed 3 years ago

scottransom commented 5 years ago

I just noticed that for the GUI, the topocentric (usually0 times are used to compute binary phase. But the ephemerides are in barycentric times, so that's what should be used.

This also applies to issue #111

https://github.com/nanograv/PINT/blob/cda85493ab3f78ac67e42527bd617fb3323570fe/pint/pintk/pulsar.py#L132

paulray commented 5 years ago

Indeed, that sure is wrong!

aarchiba commented 5 years ago

Shouldn't it use times as measured at the binary barycenter? Is that even a notion in pint?

That is, DM and transverse-velocity corrections should be made before using them to compute orbital phases.