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U. S. Naval Observatory Washington, D. C. 20392-5420 Ued to Advance for the Astronomical Almanac and Astro- Nomical Phenomena 633 U. S. Naval Observatory Washington, D. C. 20392-5420 ued to advance for The Astronomical Almanac and Astro- nomical Phenomena. The Astronomical Almanac for 2001 was published at the earliest date in over 15 years. Proceed- I. PERSONNEL ings of the U.S. NAO Sesquicentennial Symposium, held last A. Civilian Personnel year, were published during this reporting period. USNO Circular 178, ‘‘List of Active Professional Observatories,’’ Retirements included Alan Bird. by M. Lukac and R. Miller, went to press in June 2000. Tom Corbin retired on Oct. 2, 1999 after a 35-year career Exchange of material also continued with both the Institut de at USNO. F.S. Gauss retired on 2 June, after a 37-year career Mechanique Celeste ͑France͒ and HMNAO. at USNO. A major effort to streamline almanac production is ongo- ing within the NAO. S. Stewart continued to review, docu- B. DoD Science and Engineering Apprenticeship ment, upgrade, and standardize production of Sections E and Program HofThe Astronomical Almanac, as well as documenting the rest of the sections prepared by the U.S. NAO. This infor- The USNO summer intern program for high school and mation and the status of all publications are now on-line college students continued in the summer of 1999. This pro- within the department for easier access and timeliness. Al- gram, called the Science and Engineering Apprentice Pro- manac production software is being moved into an auto- gram ͑SEAP͒, is sponsored by the Department of Defense mated version control system for the purposes of standard- ͑DoD͒ and managed by George Washington University. For ization and archiving. Fiala, M. Stollberg, and Stewart the summer of 2000, the interns, and the departments they continued to convert preparation of page copy from several worked in were: Shawnette Adams ͑Public Affairs͒, Laura software packages to one standard. This has greatly reduced Briskin ͑Time Service͒, Brian Grefenstette ͑Astrometry͒, preparation time. Miller successfully modernized several an- Arthur Hyder ͑Time Service͒, Dean Kang ͑Library͒, Tracy tiquated production procedures, including production of the Klayton ͑Astrometry͒, Steven Movit ͑Astrometry͒, Howard Air Almanac sky diagrams. He also greatly improved ex- Schindel ͑Time Service͒, Diana Seymour ͑Astrometry͒, change of documents and page copy with the British office Henry Smith ͑Astrometry͒, Sabrina Snell ͑Astronomical Ap- by electronic means. Quality control and consistency were plications͒, Lim Vu ͑Earth Orientation͒, Lillian Whitesell emphasized—especially by Lukac, Stewart, and Miller— ͑Astrometry͒, and Sarah Zelechoski ͑Earth Orientation͒. with the entire department staff assisting in the effort. Under the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates Implementation of plans for major revision of The Astro- ͑REU͒ programs. S. Levine hosted A. Reiffel ͑Yale Univer- nomical Almanac continued. In meetings between staffs of sity͒. the U.S. NAO and HMNAO, it was agreed that the Interna- tional Celestial Reference System ͑ICRS͒ and new funda- II. ASTRONOMICAL APPLICATIONS mental ephemerides of the solar system will be introduced no DEPARTMENT earlier than the edition for 2003. There was much discussion The department continued to perform its core mission of of the contents of Sections F ͑Satellites of the Planets͒ and G providing practical astronomical information and data via ͑Minor Planets and Comets͒, and the possibility of exchang- printed publications, software products, and the World Wide ing responsibilities for their preparation. Web, while maintaining a modest research program in dy- A survey of users of Astronomical Phenomena was dis- namical astronomy to meet future needs. The department’s tributed with the edition for 2002, and will close next year. products were used by the U.S. Navy, other components of An audit of the distribution list of publications on exchange the U.S. government, the international scientific community, was begun, also to close next year. The information will go and the general public. J. Bangert continued to serve as de- into a database to make future distributions more accurate partment head. and timely. The survey of users of The Air Almanac was completed. The percentage of return was rather low, but the A. Almanacs and Other Publications comments were very informative and indicate that the pub- The Nautical Almanac Office ͑NAO͒ continued to be re- lication in its present form will be needed for at least another sponsible for the printed publications produced by the de- 5-10 years by some portion of the users. The feasibility of partment. The NAO continued its collaboration with Her providing this publication in electronic format, such as Por- ͑ ͒ Majesty’s Nautical Almanac Office ͑HMNAO͒ of the United table Document Format PDF files, is being investigated. Kingdom, to jointly publish The Astronomical Almanac, The Nautical Almanac , The Air Almanac, and Astronomical Phe- B. Software Products nomena. A. Fiala, as Chief of the NAO, supervised the USNO portion of this work. G. Kaplan assumed the role of The Product Development Division, headed by N. Oliv- Acting Chief following Fiala’s retirement in June 2000. ersen, continued to be responsible for the department’s soft- During the reporting period, the almanacs for 2001 and ware products. Astronomical Phenomena for 2002 were published. The next STELLA ͑System to Estimate Latitude and Longitude As- annual editions are in preparation. Publication dates contin- tronomically͒, a celestial navigation software tool developed 634 ANNUAL REPORT specifically for the U. S. Armed Forces, continued to be Murison completed a survey of the dynamics of inner widely used throughout the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. The solar system asteroids. He also investigated the effects of version of STELLA currently in use by the fleet ͑version 1.1͒ asteroid ‘‘noise’’ on the motions of the inner planets. As part is a DOS-based system that is valid through 2004. By the of this investigation, he determined the asteroid mass distri- end of the reporting period, W. Tangren, W. Hultquist, and bution of the main and outer asteroid belts as functions of Oliversen nearly completed development of a new version of position and asteroid diameter, as well as the azimuthally STELLA, specifically designed for Microsoft Windows op- averaged radial distribution. From numerical integrations of erating systems ͑i.e. Windows 95/98, and NT 4.0ϩ͒. The the 310 asteroids with diameter greater than 85 km, Murison new version, STELLA 2.0, retains all of the basic function- found in power spectra of the motions of the inner planets ality that was present in STELLA 1.1, but now features that asteroid noise effects consist of three components: domi- many improvements to the user interface and better integra- nant perturbations from a small number of large asteroids, tion of the component services. P. Janiczek ͑USNO, retired͒ intermediate effects of a few dozen of the next largest aster- is developing the user manual for STELLA 2.0 and con- oids, and a smooth noise background due to many small- ducted extensive tests of pre-release versions of the software. diameter asteroids. Time delay mappings vividly illustrate Kaplan and Bangert also made contributions to the design the destruction of hypersurfaces in phase space due to aster- and evaluation of the product. It is expected that STELLA oid perturbations. 2.0 will be released to the fleet in fall 2000. In related work, Hilton is working on a model to improve Version 1.5 of MICA ͑Multi-year Interactive Computer the ephemerides of the inner solar system planets by replac- Almanac͒, covering the years 1990-2005, continued to be ing all but the largest members of a family of asteroids with distributed for USNO by Willmann-Bell, Inc. ͑http:// a ring of matter whose properties are determined by the size www.willbell.com͒. Significant progress was made in design distribution and proper elements of the family. and development of the next major revision of MICA. MICA Kaplan continued a collaboration with B. Mason and W. 2.0 will feature full Windows compatibility, a revamped user Hartkopf ͑Astrometry Department͒ and K. Aksnes ͑Univer- interface, and many new capabilities. W. Harris added code sity of Oslo, Norway͒ in a project to obtain high-precision to the Cϩϩ computational engine to support a number of relative astrometry of the Galilean satellites using speckle new features, including dates and times of moon phases, lo- interferometry. The USNO speckle camera was improved cal circumstances of eclipses and transits, and other phenom- this year and now has a 10-arcsecond field of view. Speckle ena of solar system bodies. He also made substantial observations can be obtained whenever any two satellites are progress designing the prototype user interface. within this field, although the sharpness of the speckle auto- Minor revisions were made to the C version of the Naval correlation function depends on the separation and the see- Observatory Vector Astrometry Subroutines ͑NOVAS͒ as- ing. The data reduction for several events is proceeding and trometric software package. The current version numbers at some calibration issues are under investigation. the end of the reporting period were 2.0.1 ͑C͒ and 2.0 ͑For- Murison worked on a detailed analysis of the spin dynam- tran͒. These versions of NOVAS support data that conform ics of the FAME astrometric satellite, which was approved to the ICRS as well as to the FK5 system. NOVAS is avail- for NASA funding in September with a projected launch date able for download from the AA department Web site ͑ http:// of June 2004. Following up on an idea by R. Reasenberg aa.usno.navy.mil/AA/software/novas/novas_info.html͒. ͑Harvard/Smithsonian͒, Murison showed how solar radiation pressure, acting on a conical sun shield, could be used to C. Dynamical Astronomy drive the precession of FAME’s spin axis. This use of solar radiation pressure eliminates the need for thruster firings as The Dynamical Astronomy Division, headed by Kaplan, the driving mechanism for the spacecraft’s precession.
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