In forming the declination part of the instrumental frame of an absolute transit circle catalog, the combined all-sky solution is superior to the traditional method that only utilized observations of circumpolar stars. Indeed, we have shown that the circumpolar solutions may have introduced systematic biases into the catalogs. Further, we have shown that, if the combined all-sky solution is adopted, the instrumental frame may be aligned to a dynamical one by simple rotations about the axes of a rectangular coordinate system. The problems of the declination offset may be handled if care is taken in choosing a well distributed set of planetary observations from which the rotation angles necessary for alignment are derived. The Pole-to-pole program holds the promise of providing new information on this problem and the problems presented by the visual appearance of extended objects. Solutions involving three transit circle catalogs demonstrate that the declination offset is similar to the "traditional" equator correction and that the standard method gives an adjustment equivalent to the traditional equinox correction, as well as additional adjustments that were not accounted for by the older method.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Drs. T.E. Corbin and G.H. Kaplan for their many helpful discussions and in particular for the suggestion of treating the alignment process as a strict rotation problem. We would like to express our appreciation to Z.G. Yao, formerly of Sachs Freeman Associates and working at the U.S. Naval Observatory, for the data in Tables 2 (click here)-4 (click here) in the columns labeled "traditional". We would also like to recognize our referee for his many helpful comments and suggestions, and particularly for the much valued discussions on organization and clarity. And finally we would like to thank Dr. M. Germain for his insights into the properties of least square solutions of trigonometric functions.