Astronomy 2013 Index
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
The Nearest Stars: a Guided Tour by Sherwood Harrington, Astronomical Society of the Pacific
www.astrosociety.org/uitc No. 5 - Spring 1986 © 1986, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 390 Ashton Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94112. The Nearest Stars: A Guided Tour by Sherwood Harrington, Astronomical Society of the Pacific A tour through our stellar neighborhood As evening twilight fades during April and early May, a brilliant, blue-white star can be seen low in the sky toward the southwest. That star is called Sirius, and it is the brightest star in Earth's nighttime sky. Sirius looks so bright in part because it is a relatively powerful light producer; if our Sun were suddenly replaced by Sirius, our daylight on Earth would be more than 20 times as bright as it is now! But the other reason Sirius is so brilliant in our nighttime sky is that it is so close; Sirius is the nearest neighbor star to the Sun that can be seen with the unaided eye from the Northern Hemisphere. "Close'' in the interstellar realm, though, is a very relative term. If you were to model the Sun as a basketball, then our planet Earth would be about the size of an apple seed 30 yards away from it — and even the nearest other star (alpha Centauri, visible from the Southern Hemisphere) would be 6,000 miles away. Distances among the stars are so large that it is helpful to express them using the light-year — the distance light travels in one year — as a measuring unit. In this way of expressing distances, alpha Centauri is about four light-years away, and Sirius is about eight and a half light- years distant. -
University of Iowa Instruments in Space
University of Iowa Instruments in Space A-D13-089-5 Wind Van Allen Probes Cluster Mercury Earth Venus Mars Express HaloSat MMS Geotail Mars Voyager 2 Neptune Uranus Juno Pluto Jupiter Saturn Voyager 1 Spaceflight instruments designed and built at the University of Iowa in the Department of Physics & Astronomy (1958-2019) Explorer 1 1958 Feb. 1 OGO 4 1967 July 28 Juno * 2011 Aug. 5 Launch Date Launch Date Launch Date Spacecraft Spacecraft Spacecraft Explorer 3 (U1T9)58 Mar. 26 Injun 5 1(U9T68) Aug. 8 (UT) ExpEloxrpelro r1e r 4 1915985 8F eJbu.l y1 26 OEGxOpl o4rer 41 (IMP-5) 19697 Juunlye 2 281 Juno * 2011 Aug. 5 Explorer 2 (launch failure) 1958 Mar. 5 OGO 5 1968 Mar. 4 Van Allen Probe A * 2012 Aug. 30 ExpPloiorenre 3er 1 1915985 8M Oarc. t2. 611 InEjuxnp lo5rer 45 (SSS) 197618 NAouvg.. 186 Van Allen Probe B * 2012 Aug. 30 ExpPloiorenre 4er 2 1915985 8Ju Nlyo 2v.6 8 EUxpKlo 4r e(rA 4ri1el -(4IM) P-5) 197619 DJuenc.e 1 211 Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission / 1 * 2015 Mar. 12 ExpPloiorenre 5e r 3 (launch failure) 1915985 8A uDge.c 2. 46 EPxpiolonreeerr 4130 (IMP- 6) 19721 Maarr.. 313 HMEaRgCnIe CtousbpeShaetr i(cF oMxu-1ltDis scaatelell itMe)i ssion / 2 * 2021081 J5a nM. a1r2. 12 PionPeioenr e1er 4 1915985 9O cMt.a 1r.1 3 EExpxlpolorerer r4 457 ( S(IMSSP)-7) 19721 SNeopvt.. 1263 HMaalogSnaett oCsupbhee Sriact eMlluitlet i*scale Mission / 3 * 2021081 M5a My a2r1. 12 Pioneer 2 1958 Nov. 8 UK 4 (Ariel-4) 1971 Dec. 11 Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission / 4 * 2015 Mar. -
Constraints on Common Envelope Magnetic Fields from Observations Of
MNRAS 439, 2014–2024 (2014) doi:10.1093/mnras/stu079 Advance Access publication 2014 February 10 Constraints on common envelope magnetic fields from observations of jets in planetary nebulae James Tocknell,1,2‹ OrsolaDeMarco1,2 and Mark Wardle1,2 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia 2Astronomy, Astrophysics and Astrophotonics Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia Accepted 2014 January 13. Received 2014 January 13; in original form 2013 August 22 ABSTRACT The common envelope (CE) interaction describes the swallowing of a nearby companion by Downloaded from a growing, evolving star. CEs that take place during the asymptotic giant branch phase of the primary may lead to the formation of a planetary nebula (PN) with a post-CE close binary in the middle. We have used published observations of masses and kinematics of jets in four post-CE PN to infer physical characteristics of the CE interaction. In three of the four systems http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/ studied, Abell 63, ETHOS 1 and the Necklace PN, the kinematics indicate that the jets were launched a few thousand years before the CE and we favour a scenario where this happened before Roche lobe overflow, although better models of wind accretion and wind Roche lobe overflow are needed. The magnetic fields inferred to launch pre-CE jets are of the order of a few gauss. In the fourth case, NGC 6778, the kinematics indicate that the jets were launched about 3000 yr after the CE interaction. Magnetic fields of the order of a few hundreds to a few thousands gauss are inferred in this case, approximately in line with predictions of post-CE magnetic fields. -
Information Summaries
TIROS 8 12/21/63 Delta-22 TIROS-H (A-53) 17B S National Aeronautics and TIROS 9 1/22/65 Delta-28 TIROS-I (A-54) 17A S Space Administration TIROS Operational 2TIROS 10 7/1/65 Delta-32 OT-1 17B S John F. Kennedy Space Center 2ESSA 1 2/3/66 Delta-36 OT-3 (TOS) 17A S Information Summaries 2 2 ESSA 2 2/28/66 Delta-37 OT-2 (TOS) 17B S 2ESSA 3 10/2/66 2Delta-41 TOS-A 1SLC-2E S PMS 031 (KSC) OSO (Orbiting Solar Observatories) Lunar and Planetary 2ESSA 4 1/26/67 2Delta-45 TOS-B 1SLC-2E S June 1999 OSO 1 3/7/62 Delta-8 OSO-A (S-16) 17A S 2ESSA 5 4/20/67 2Delta-48 TOS-C 1SLC-2E S OSO 2 2/3/65 Delta-29 OSO-B2 (S-17) 17B S Mission Launch Launch Payload Launch 2ESSA 6 11/10/67 2Delta-54 TOS-D 1SLC-2E S OSO 8/25/65 Delta-33 OSO-C 17B U Name Date Vehicle Code Pad Results 2ESSA 7 8/16/68 2Delta-58 TOS-E 1SLC-2E S OSO 3 3/8/67 Delta-46 OSO-E1 17A S 2ESSA 8 12/15/68 2Delta-62 TOS-F 1SLC-2E S OSO 4 10/18/67 Delta-53 OSO-D 17B S PIONEER (Lunar) 2ESSA 9 2/26/69 2Delta-67 TOS-G 17B S OSO 5 1/22/69 Delta-64 OSO-F 17B S Pioneer 1 10/11/58 Thor-Able-1 –– 17A U Major NASA 2 1 OSO 6/PAC 8/9/69 Delta-72 OSO-G/PAC 17A S Pioneer 2 11/8/58 Thor-Able-2 –– 17A U IMPROVED TIROS OPERATIONAL 2 1 OSO 7/TETR 3 9/29/71 Delta-85 OSO-H/TETR-D 17A S Pioneer 3 12/6/58 Juno II AM-11 –– 5 U 3ITOS 1/OSCAR 5 1/23/70 2Delta-76 1TIROS-M/OSCAR 1SLC-2W S 2 OSO 8 6/21/75 Delta-112 OSO-1 17B S Pioneer 4 3/3/59 Juno II AM-14 –– 5 S 3NOAA 1 12/11/70 2Delta-81 ITOS-A 1SLC-2W S Launches Pioneer 11/26/59 Atlas-Able-1 –– 14 U 3ITOS 10/21/71 2Delta-86 ITOS-B 1SLC-2E U OGO (Orbiting Geophysical -
Naming the Extrasolar Planets
Naming the extrasolar planets W. Lyra Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, K¨onigstuhl 17, 69177, Heidelberg, Germany [email protected] Abstract and OGLE-TR-182 b, which does not help educators convey the message that these planets are quite similar to Jupiter. Extrasolar planets are not named and are referred to only In stark contrast, the sentence“planet Apollo is a gas giant by their assigned scientific designation. The reason given like Jupiter” is heavily - yet invisibly - coated with Coper- by the IAU to not name the planets is that it is consid- nicanism. ered impractical as planets are expected to be common. I One reason given by the IAU for not considering naming advance some reasons as to why this logic is flawed, and sug- the extrasolar planets is that it is a task deemed impractical. gest names for the 403 extrasolar planet candidates known One source is quoted as having said “if planets are found to as of Oct 2009. The names follow a scheme of association occur very frequently in the Universe, a system of individual with the constellation that the host star pertains to, and names for planets might well rapidly be found equally im- therefore are mostly drawn from Roman-Greek mythology. practicable as it is for stars, as planet discoveries progress.” Other mythologies may also be used given that a suitable 1. This leads to a second argument. It is indeed impractical association is established. to name all stars. But some stars are named nonetheless. In fact, all other classes of astronomical bodies are named. -
April 2008 SKYSCRAPERS, INC · Amateur Astronomical Society of Rhode Island · 47 Peeptoad Road North Scituate, RI 02857 · April Meeting with Dr
The SkyscraperVol. 35 No. 4 April 2008 SKYSCRAPERS, INC · Amateur Astronomical Society Of Rhode Island · 47 Peeptoad Road North Scituate, RI 02857 · www.theSkyscrapers.org April Meeting with Dr. Alan Guth Friday, April 4 at Seagrave Memorial Observatory Dr. Alan Guth, Professor of Origins, Alan Guth, A Golden Age of Physics at the Massachusetts Insti- Cosmology and other publications. tute of Technology, is best known He will be presenting a talk entitled The Orion Nebula: SBIG 1001E on Meade 16” for the “inflationary” theory of “Inflationary Cosmology.” SCT at Barus and Holley Observatory; L = 12 ex- cosmology in which many features For the April meeting we will be posures x 5 seconds each, binned 1x1; R,G,B = of our universe, including how it returning to Seagrave Observatory. 3 exposures each x 5 seconds each, binned 2x2; came to be so uniform and why it Elections will be held at the April 27 exposures total, total exposure time = 2.25 began so close to the critical density meeting and membership renewals minutes. Images combined and processed using can be explained by. Dr. Guth is the are due. An elections ballot and Maxim DL. Photo by Bob Horton. author of The Inflationary Universe, renewal form are included in the the Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic back of this issue. In This Issue April Meeting with 1 Dr. Alan Guth April 2008 President’s Message 2 Glenn Jackson 4 7:30 pm Annual Meeting with Dr. Alan Guth April Lyrids Meteor 3 Friday Seagrave Memorial Observatory Shower Dave Huestis 5 8:00 pm Public Observing Night Tracking Wildlife -
The Skyscraper 2009 04.Indd
A Better Galaxy Guide: Early Spring M67: One of the most ancient open clusters known and Craig Cortis is a great novelty in this regard. Located 1.7° due W of mag NGC 2419: 3.25° SE of mag 6.2 66 Aurigae. Hard to find 4.3 Alpha Cancri. and see; at E end of short row of two mag 7.5 stars. Highly NGC 2775: Located 3.7° ENE of mag 3.1 Zeta Hydrae. significant and worth the effort —may be approximately (Look for “Head of Hydra” first.) 300,000 light years distant and qualify as an extragalactic NGC 2903: Easily found at 1.5° due S of mag 4.3 Lambda cluster. Named the Intergalactic Wanderer. Leonis. NGC 2683: Marks NW “crook” of coathanger-type triangle M95: One of three bright galaxies forming a compact with easy double star mag 4.2 Iota Cancri (which is SSW by triangle, along with M96 and M105. All three can be seen 4.8°) and mag 3.1 Alpha Lyncis (at 6° to the ENE). together in a low power, wide field view. M105 is at the NE tip of triangle, midway between stars 52 and 53 Leonis, mag Object Type R.A. Dec. Mag. Size 5.5 and 5.3 respectively —M95 is at W tip. Lynx NGC 3521: Located 0.5° due E of mag 6.0 62 Leonis. M65: One of a pair of bright galaxies that can be seen in NGC 2419 GC 07h 38.1m +38° 53’ 10.3 4.2’ a wide field view along with M66, which lies just E. -
Planets Transiting Non-Eclipsing Binaries
A&A 570, A91 (2014) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201323112 & c ESO 2014 Astrophysics Planets transiting non-eclipsing binaries David V. Martin1 and Amaury H. M. J. Triaud2;? 1 Observatoire Astronomique de l’Université de Genève, Chemin des Maillettes 51, CH-1290 Sauverny, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] 2 Kavli Institute for Astrophysics & Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Received 22 November 2013 / Accepted 28 August 2014 ABSTRACT The majority of binary stars do not eclipse. Current searches for transiting circumbinary planets concentrate on eclipsing binaries, and are therefore restricted to a small fraction of potential hosts. We investigate the concept of finding planets transiting non-eclipsing binaries, whose geometry would require mutually inclined planes. Using an N-body code we explore how the number and sequence of transits vary as functions of observing time and orbital parameters. The concept is then generalised thanks to a suite of simulated circumbinary systems. Binaries are constructed from radial-velocity surveys of the solar neighbourhood. They are then populated with orbiting gas giants, drawn from a range of distributions. The binary population is shown to be compatible with the Kepler eclipsing binary catalogue, indicating that the properties of binaries may be as universal as the initial mass function. These synthetic systems produce transiting circumbinary planets occurring on both eclipsing and non-eclipsing binaries. Simulated planets transiting eclipsing binaries are compared with published Kepler detections. We find 1) that planets transiting non-eclipsing binaries are probably present in the Kepler data; 2) that observational biases alone cannot account for the observed over-density of circumbinary planets near the stability limit, which implies a physical pile-up; and 3) that the distributions of gas giants orbiting single and binary stars are likely different. -
(50000) Quaoar, See Quaoar (90377) Sedna, See Sedna 1992 QB1 267
Index (50000) Quaoar, see Quaoar Apollo Mission Science Reports 114 (90377) Sedna, see Sedna Apollo samples 114, 115, 122, 1992 QB1 267, 268 ap-value, 3-hour, conversion from Kp 10 1996 TL66 268 arcade, post-eruptive 24–26 1998 WW31 274 Archimedian spiral 11 2000 CR105 269 Arecibo observatory 63 2000 OO67 277 Ariel, carbon dioxide ice 256–257 2003 EL61 270, 271, 273, 274, 275, 286, astrometric detection, of extrasolar planets – mass 273 190 – satellites 273 Atlas 230, 242, 244 – water ice 273 Bartels, Julius 4, 8 2003 UB313 269, 270, 271–272, 274, 286 – methane 271–272 Becquerel, Antoine Henry 3 – orbital parameters 271 Biermann, Ludwig 5 – satellite 272 biomass, from chemolithoautotrophs, on Earth 169 – spectroscopic studies 271 –, – on Mars 169 2005 FY 269, 270, 272–273, 286 9 bombardment, late heavy 68, 70, 71, 77, 78 – atmosphere 273 Borealis basin 68, 71, 72 – methane 272–273 ‘Brown Dwarf Desert’ 181, 188 – orbital parameters 272 brown dwarfs, deuterium-burning limit 181 51 Pegasi b 179, 185 – formation 181 Alfvén, Hannes 11 Callisto 197, 198, 199, 200, 204, 205, 206, ALH84001 (martian meteorite) 160 207, 211, 213 Amalthea 198, 199, 200, 204–205, 206, 207 – accretion 206, 207 – bright crater 199 – compared with Ganymede 204, 207 – density 205 – composition 204 – discovery by Barnard 205 – geology 213 – discovery of icy nature 200 – ice thickness 204 – evidence for icy composition 205 – internal structure 197, 198, 204 – internal structure 198 – multi-ringed impact basins 205, 211 – orbit 205 – partial differentiation 200, 204, 206, -
On the Detection of Exoplanets Via Radial Velocity Doppler Spectroscopy
The Downtown Review Volume 1 Issue 1 Article 6 January 2015 On the Detection of Exoplanets via Radial Velocity Doppler Spectroscopy Joseph P. Glaser Cleveland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/tdr Part of the Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Recommended Citation Glaser, Joseph P.. "On the Detection of Exoplanets via Radial Velocity Doppler Spectroscopy." The Downtown Review. Vol. 1. Iss. 1 (2015) . Available at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/tdr/vol1/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at EngagedScholarship@CSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Downtown Review by an authorized editor of EngagedScholarship@CSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Glaser: Detection of Exoplanets 1 Introduction to Exoplanets For centuries, some of humanity’s greatest minds have pondered over the possibility of other worlds orbiting the uncountable number of stars that exist in the visible universe. The seeds for eventual scientific speculation on the possibility of these "exoplanets" began with the works of a 16th century philosopher, Giordano Bruno. In his modernly celebrated work, On the Infinite Universe & Worlds, Bruno states: "This space we declare to be infinite (...) In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own." By the time of the European Scientific Revolution, Isaac Newton grew fond of the idea and wrote in his Principia: "If the fixed stars are the centers of similar systems [when compared to the solar system], they will all be constructed according to a similar design and subject to the dominion of One." Due to limitations on observational equipment, the field of exoplanetary systems existed primarily in theory until the late 1980s. -
The W-Type W Uma Contact Binary MU Cancri
226 Odell and Eaton, JAAVSO Volume 48, 2020 The W-type W UMa Contact Binary MU Cancri Andrew P. Odell (deceased May 2019) Emeritus Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011 Joel A. Eaton 7050 Bakerville Road, Waverly, TN 37185; [email protected] Received August 11, 2020; revised October 15, 2020; accepted October 20, 2020 Abstract We use three complete light curves for MU Cancri, a faint W-type W UMa contact binary, to investigate possible mechanisms for changes in such binaries’ light curves. The standard Roche model, as implemented by the Wilson-Devinney code, does not fit the observations at their level of precision. Most of this discrepancy can be explained by placing one or two moderate starspots (rspot ~ 10–12°) on the more massive component. However, this does not resolve the discrepancy, since the solutions for the three epochs have different mass ratios, implying unmodelled changes in eclipse depths. This, in turn, implies that more spots are changing the depths in unpredictable ways. Thus we are confronted with limits on just how precisely light curve solutions can define the physical properties of a contact binary. We use spectra to classify the star (G3–G7) and to measure a spectroscopic mass ratio (q = 2.63), significantly closer to 1.0 than the photometric mass ratios (3.0–3.3), but this difference is unlikely to be caused by third light. And we also extend the period study of Alton and Stępień. 1. Introduction MUCnc-JAAVSO-482.txt at ftp://ftp.aavso.org/public/datasets/. -
Gamma Ray Bursts (Grbs)
15 Epilogue Roger D. Blandford Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Department of Physics and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA The preceding fourteen chapters have been written at a good time to take stock of the field of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). The extraordinary discov- eries made over the last decade or so about a phenomenon that has been around for over four decades seem to have attained a mature state. Thou- sands of bursts have been observed, classified and followed up and it is now the special and rare cases, that are extreme by some important measure, that are most likely to advance our understanding as radically new γ−ray and X-ray observing capabilities are at least a decade away. On the theoret- ical front, some prescient inferences have been vindicated, phenomenological models that are usable by observers have been developed, and simulation has made great strides. The greatest challenge is to explore the underlying physical processes in much more detail and this is likely to require a new generation of high performance computers. Nonetheless, the GRB pace of discovery like much of contemporary astrophysics will likely exceed that in most other subfields of physical science. I was asked to write a critique of where we are today and what I think will be the major developments going forward. My qualifications for this task are not promising. I have probably contributed most to the study of a high energy γ−ray stellar phenomenon unintentionally in the context of trying to explain variability of the lowest frequency radio emission from active galaxies and my largest attempt to work on what I thought was relevant turned out to be only applicable, at best, to X-ray bursting neutron stars.