The goal of the work described here is to create the definitive catalogue for the new International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) using the best data and methods available at the time the work was done. This work is the joint cooperative effort of a subgroup of the IAU Working Group on Reference Frames which was formed expressly for this purpose in February 1995. The authors of this report constituted the subgroup. A fuller account of this report can be found in the introduction to the ICRF catalog (IERS 1997).

The ICRF of 608 sources presented here is based on essentially all the VLBI observations accu-mulated over about 15 years in several worldwide programs. Dual frequency Mark III data have both geodetic and astrometric applications. Most of the data (95% of nearly 2 million observations) were acquired primarily for geodetic purposes. The major geodetic programs include: NASA’s Crustal Dynamics Project/Space Geodesy Program and USNO’s NAVEX sessions for the terrestrial reference frame, as well as IRIS, NAVNET and NEOS sessions for monitoring Earth rotation. The geodetic programs have used the brightest radio sources, gradually concentrating on the most com-pact as sensitivity improved. These geodetic sources were also the foundation of astrometric work because of the large number of observations for the ~150 most commonly used. The astrometric programs which densify the sky include the Radio-Optical Reference Frame sessions done by US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and USNO and the space navigation efforts of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).