This is going to become more important after we rebuild the Gaia reference catalogs for DR2, which will have PM and parallax. I also expect that the questions we get from the science collaborations about our astrometric performance will become more serious around then too. John Swinbank, is implementing this somewhere on the roadmap?

This is currently on the schedule for the F18 cycle.

Given continued staffing shortages, there is more work on the F18 schedule than it will be possible to complete. It'll be a matter of discussion with the science leadership how it should be prioritised relative to other work.

Is adding parallax corrections included within the scope of this ticket (it needs to be at the level of precision that we'll moderately easily reach as soon as astrometric jointcal is working)?  RFC-368 specifies that we include parallax in the reference catalogues.  How does this ticket relate to DM-8828?

After some planning conversations over the last few days, here's where we're going with proper motions in particular and reference catalogues in general:

• The scope of this epic will encompass both RFC-271 (adding proper motions) and RFC-368 (which includes parallaxes, amongst other things). After writing this comment, I'll update the work triggered by the latter to point to this ticket and close DM-11998 as a duplicate.
• Paul Price has been working on adding proper motions in DM-8828. That work is temporarily on hold while he deals with some PFS issues, but he hopes to come back to finish it off within a week or two. If Paul doesn't get chance to return to this within the fairly near future, he's agreed that Russell Owen can step in to get this ticket merged.
• During F18, Russell Owen will finish the remaining work to implement both RFC-271 & RFC-368 on this epic. That will include providing documentation describing the contents of reference catalogs.

All work on this epic (implementing both RFCs, and updating documentation to match) was carried out in DM-8828. Thanks Russell Owen!