Annual Report 2011
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Mathématiques Et Espace
Atelier disciplinaire AD 5 Mathématiques et Espace Anne-Cécile DHERS, Education Nationale (mathématiques) Peggy THILLET, Education Nationale (mathématiques) Yann BARSAMIAN, Education Nationale (mathématiques) Olivier BONNETON, Sciences - U (mathématiques) Cahier d'activités Activité 1 : L'HORIZON TERRESTRE ET SPATIAL Activité 2 : DENOMBREMENT D'ETOILES DANS LE CIEL ET L'UNIVERS Activité 3 : D'HIPPARCOS A BENFORD Activité 4 : OBSERVATION STATISTIQUE DES CRATERES LUNAIRES Activité 5 : DIAMETRE DES CRATERES D'IMPACT Activité 6 : LOI DE TITIUS-BODE Activité 7 : MODELISER UNE CONSTELLATION EN 3D Crédits photo : NASA / CNES L'HORIZON TERRESTRE ET SPATIAL (3 ème / 2 nde ) __________________________________________________ OBJECTIF : Détermination de la ligne d'horizon à une altitude donnée. COMPETENCES : ● Utilisation du théorème de Pythagore ● Utilisation de Google Earth pour évaluer des distances à vol d'oiseau ● Recherche personnelle de données REALISATION : Il s'agit ici de mettre en application le théorème de Pythagore mais avec une vision terrestre dans un premier temps suite à un questionnement de l'élève puis dans un second temps de réutiliser la même démarche dans le cadre spatial de la visibilité d'un satellite. Fiche élève ____________________________________________________________________________ 1. Victor Hugo a écrit dans Les Châtiments : "Les horizons aux horizons succèdent […] : on avance toujours, on n’arrive jamais ". Face à la mer, vous voyez l'horizon à perte de vue. Mais "est-ce loin, l'horizon ?". D'après toi, jusqu'à quelle distance peux-tu voir si le temps est clair ? Réponse 1 : " Sans instrument, je peux voir jusqu'à .................. km " Réponse 2 : " Avec une paire de jumelles, je peux voir jusqu'à ............... km " 2. Nous allons maintenant calculer à l'aide du théorème de Pythagore la ligne d'horizon pour une hauteur H donnée. -
Lurking in the Shadows: Wide-Separation Gas Giants As Tracers of Planet Formation
Lurking in the Shadows: Wide-Separation Gas Giants as Tracers of Planet Formation Thesis by Marta Levesque Bryan In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Pasadena, California 2018 Defended May 1, 2018 ii © 2018 Marta Levesque Bryan ORCID: [0000-0002-6076-5967] All rights reserved iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I would like to thank Heather Knutson, who I had the great privilege of working with as my thesis advisor. Her encouragement, guidance, and perspective helped me navigate many a challenging problem, and my conversations with her were a consistent source of positivity and learning throughout my time at Caltech. I leave graduate school a better scientist and person for having her as a role model. Heather fostered a wonderfully positive and supportive environment for her students, giving us the space to explore and grow - I could not have asked for a better advisor or research experience. I would also like to thank Konstantin Batygin for enthusiastic and illuminating discussions that always left me more excited to explore the result at hand. Thank you as well to Dimitri Mawet for providing both expertise and contagious optimism for some of my latest direct imaging endeavors. Thank you to the rest of my thesis committee, namely Geoff Blake, Evan Kirby, and Chuck Steidel for their support, helpful conversations, and insightful questions. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Brendan Bowler. His talk at Caltech my second year of graduate school introduced me to an unexpected population of massive wide-separation planetary-mass companions, and lead to a long-running collaboration from which several of my thesis projects were born. -
The Dunhuang Chinese Sky: a Comprehensive Study of the Oldest Known Star Atlas
25/02/09JAHH/v4 1 THE DUNHUANG CHINESE SKY: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF THE OLDEST KNOWN STAR ATLAS JEAN-MARC BONNET-BIDAUD Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique ,Centre de Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France E-mail: [email protected] FRANÇOISE PRADERIE Observatoire de Paris, 61 Avenue de l’Observatoire, F- 75014 Paris, France E-mail: [email protected] and SUSAN WHITFIELD The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of the star atlas included in the medieval Chinese manuscript (Or.8210/S.3326), discovered in 1907 by the archaeologist Aurel Stein at the Silk Road town of Dunhuang and now held in the British Library. Although partially studied by a few Chinese scholars, it has never been fully displayed and discussed in the Western world. This set of sky maps (12 hour angle maps in quasi-cylindrical projection and a circumpolar map in azimuthal projection), displaying the full sky visible from the Northern hemisphere, is up to now the oldest complete preserved star atlas from any civilisation. It is also the first known pictorial representation of the quasi-totality of the Chinese constellations. This paper describes the history of the physical object – a roll of thin paper drawn with ink. We analyse the stellar content of each map (1339 stars, 257 asterisms) and the texts associated with the maps. We establish the precision with which the maps are drawn (1.5 to 4° for the brightest stars) and examine the type of projections used. -
On the Metallicity of Open Clusters II. Spectroscopy
Astronomy & Astrophysics manuscript no. OCMetPaper2 c ESO 2013 November 12, 2013 On the metallicity of open clusters II. Spectroscopy U. Heiter1, C. Soubiran2, M. Netopil3, and E. Paunzen4 1 Institutionen för fysik och astronomi, Uppsala universitet, Box 516, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] 2 Université Bordeaux 1, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux UMR 5804, BP 89, 33270 Floirac, France 3 Institut für Astrophysik der Universität Wien, Türkenschanzstrasse 17, 1180 Wien, Austria 4 Department of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, Masaryk University, Kotlárskᡠ267/2, 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic Received 29 August 2013 / Accepted 20 October 2013 ABSTRACT Context. Open clusters are an important tool for studying the chemical evolution of the Galactic disk. Metallicity estimates are available for about ten percent of the currently known open clusters. These metallicities are based on widely differing methods, however, which introduces unknown systematic effects. Aims. In a series of three papers, we investigate the current status of published metallicities for open clusters that were derived from a variety of photometric and spectroscopic methods. The current article focuses on spectroscopic methods. The aim is to compile a comprehensive set of clusters with the most reliable metallicities from high-resolution spectroscopic studies. This set of metallicities will be the basis for a calibration of metallicities from different methods. Methods. The literature was searched for [Fe/H] estimates of individual member stars of open clusters based on the analysis of high-resolution spectra. For comparison, we also compiled [Fe/H] estimates based on spectra with low and intermediate resolution. -
Filter Performance Comparisons for Some Common Nebulae
Filter Performance Comparisons For Some Common Nebulae By Dave Knisely Light Pollution and various “nebula” filters have been around since the late 1970’s, and amateurs have been using them ever since to bring out detail (and even some objects) which were difficult to impossible to see before in modest apertures. When I started using them in the early 1980’s, specific information about which filter might work on a given object (or even whether certain filters were useful at all) was often hard to come by. Even those accounts that were available often had incomplete or inaccurate information. Getting some observational experience with the Lumicon line of filters helped, but there were still some unanswered questions. I wondered how the various filters would rank on- average against each other for a large number of objects, and whether there was a “best overall” filter. In particular, I also wondered if the much-maligned H-Beta filter was useful on more objects than the two or three targets most often mentioned in publications. In the summer of 1999, I decided to begin some more comprehensive observations to try and answer these questions and determine how to best use these filters overall. I formulated a basic survey covering a moderate number of emission and planetary nebulae to obtain some statistics on filter performance to try to address the following questions: 1. How do the various filter types compare as to what (on average) they show on a given nebula? 2. Is there one overall “best” nebula filter which will work on the largest number of objects? 3. -
Supernova Shocks in Molecular Clouds: Velocity Distribution of Molecular Hydrogen William T
Draft version September 6, 2019 Typeset using LATEX preprint2 style in AASTeX63 Supernova Shocks in Molecular Clouds: Velocity Distribution of Molecular Hydrogen William T. Reach,1 Le Ngoc Tram,1 Matthew Richter,2 Antoine Gusdorf,3 Curtis DeWitt,1 1Universities Space Research Association, MS 232-11, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA 2University of California, Davis, CA USA 3Observatoire de Paris, Ecole´ normale sup´erieure, Sorbonne Universit´e,CNRS, LERMA, 75005 Paris, France ABSTRACT Supernovae from core-collapse of massive stars drive shocks into the molecular clouds from which the stars formed. Such shocks affect future star formation from the molecu- lar clouds, and the fast-moving, dense gas with compressed magnetic fields is associated with enhanced cosmic rays. This paper presents new theoretical modeling, using the Paris-Durham shock model, and new observations at high spectral resolution, using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), of the H2 S(5) pure rota- tional line from molecular shocks in the supernova remnant IC 443. We generate MHD models for non-steady-state shocks driven by the pressure of the IC 443 blast wave into gas of densities 103 to 105 cm−3. We present the first detailed derivation of the shape of the velocity profile for emission from H2 lines behind such shocks, taking into account the shock age, preshock density, and magnetic field. For preshock densities 103{105 −3 cm , the H2 emission arises from layers that extend 0.01{0.0003 pc behind the shock, respectively. The predicted shifts of line centers, and the line widths, of the H2 lines range from 20{2, and 30{4 km s−1, respectively. -
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. -
Mode Changing and Giant Pulses Found in a Millisecond Pulsar 17 July 2018, by Tomasz Nowakowski
Mode changing and giant pulses found in a millisecond pulsar 17 July 2018, by Tomasz Nowakowski between two or more quasi-stable modes of emission. To date, mode changing has been only observed in normal pulsars. However, a recent study conducted by a team of astronomers led by Nikhil Mahajan of the University of Toronto in Canada, shows the mode changing process could be also present in millisecond pulsars, as they observed that the pulse profile of pulsar PSR B1957+20 switches between two modes. Discovered in 1988, PSR B1957+20, also known as the "Black Widow Pulsar", is a 1.6 ms eclipsing binary millisecond pulsar in the constellation Sagitta. It orbits with a brown dwarf companion with a period of 9.2 hours with an eclipse duration of approximately 20 minutes. Mahajan's team observed this pulsar for over nine hours in four daily sessions between June 13 and 16, 2014 at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, what Chandra image of PSR B1957+20. The blue and green resulted in uncovering new insights into its are optical images of the field in which the pulsar is behavior. found, the green indicating the H-alpha bow shock. The red and white are secondary shock structures "Here, we show that the millisecond pulsar PSR discovered in x-ray by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. B1957+20 shows mode changing, and that the Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/ASTRON/B.Stappers et al.; properties of the giant pulses that we found earlier Optical: AAO/J.Bland-Hawthorn & H.Jones (in the same data; Main et al. -
Exodata: a Python Package to Handle Large Exoplanet Catalogue Data
ExoData: A Python package to handle large exoplanet catalogue data Ryan Varley Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London 132 Hampstead Road, London, NW1 2PS, United Kingdom [email protected] Abstract Exoplanet science often involves using the system parameters of real exoplanets for tasks such as simulations, fitting routines, and target selection for proposals. Several exoplanet catalogues are already well established but often lack a version history and code friendly interfaces. Software that bridges the barrier between the catalogues and code enables users to improve the specific repeatability of results by facilitating the retrieval of exact system parameters used in an arti- cles results along with unifying the equations and software used. As exoplanet science moves towards large data, gone are the days where researchers can recall the current population from memory. An interface able to query the population now becomes invaluable for target selection and population analysis. ExoData is a Python interface and exploratory analysis tool for the Open Exoplanet Cata- logue. It allows the loading of exoplanet systems into Python as objects (Planet, Star, Binary etc) from which common orbital and system equations can be calculated and measured parame- ters retrieved. This allows researchers to use tested code of the common equations they require (with units) and provides a large science input catalogue of planets for easy plotting and use in research. Advanced querying of targets are possible using the database and Python programming language. ExoData is also able to parse spectral types and fill in missing parameters according to programmable specifications and equations. Examples of use cases are integration of equations into data reduction pipelines, selecting planets for observing proposals and as an input catalogue to large scale simulation and analysis of planets. -
Arxiv:2105.11583V2 [Astro-Ph.EP] 2 Jul 2021 Keck-HIRES, APF-Levy, and Lick-Hamilton Spectrographs
Draft version July 6, 2021 Typeset using LATEX twocolumn style in AASTeX63 The California Legacy Survey I. A Catalog of 178 Planets from Precision Radial Velocity Monitoring of 719 Nearby Stars over Three Decades Lee J. Rosenthal,1 Benjamin J. Fulton,1, 2 Lea A. Hirsch,3 Howard T. Isaacson,4 Andrew W. Howard,1 Cayla M. Dedrick,5, 6 Ilya A. Sherstyuk,1 Sarah C. Blunt,1, 7 Erik A. Petigura,8 Heather A. Knutson,9 Aida Behmard,9, 7 Ashley Chontos,10, 7 Justin R. Crepp,11 Ian J. M. Crossfield,12 Paul A. Dalba,13, 14 Debra A. Fischer,15 Gregory W. Henry,16 Stephen R. Kane,13 Molly Kosiarek,17, 7 Geoffrey W. Marcy,1, 7 Ryan A. Rubenzahl,1, 7 Lauren M. Weiss,10 and Jason T. Wright18, 19, 20 1Cahill Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 2IPAC-NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 3Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA 4Department of Astronomy, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA 5Cahill Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 6Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, 525 Davey Lab, University Park, PA 16802, USA 7NSF Graduate Research Fellow 8Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA 9Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 10Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai`i, -
© in This Web Service Cambridge University
Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09161-0 - Planetary Sciences: Updated Second Edition Imke de Pater and Jack J. Lissauer Index More information Index D region, 263 Airy hypothesis, 252–253, 280 I/F,59 Aitken basin, 266 β-effect, 109 albedo γ -ray fluorescence, 571 Bond albedo, 58, 77, 144 3He, 386 geometric albedo, 59 ν6 resonance, 581 giant planets, 77 monochromatic albedo, 58 ’a’a, 168f, 168 terrestrial panets, 77–78 ablation, 184 albite, 162, 239 absorption, 67 Aleutan islands, 167 absorption coefficient, 67, 71 Alfven´ velocity; see velocity absorption line, 85 Alfven´ waves, 291, 306 accretion zone, 534 ALH84001, 342 achondrites, 337, 339, 358 allotropes, 217 eucrite, 339 α decay, 352, 365 HED, 358 Amalthea, 227f, 455, 484 acid rain, 194 amorphous ice, 412, 438 activation energy, 127 Ampere’s law, 290 active region, 283 amphibole, 154 active sector, 317, 319 andesite, 156f Adams–Williams equation, 261, 281 angle of repose, 163 adaptive optics (AO), 104, 194, 494, 568f, 568–569 angular momentum, 521 adiabatic invariants anhydrous rock, 550 first invariant, 297 anion, 153 second invariant, 297–298 anomalous cosmic rays, 311f, 312 third invariant, 298 anorthite, 162, 197 adiabatic lapse rate, 63–64, 80–81, 149 anorthosite, 197 dry, 64, 80 ansa, 459 giant planets, 77 antapex, 189 superadiabatic, 64, 70, 111 Antarctica, 214 wet, 101–102 anticyclone, 111f, 112 Adrastea, 225, 227f, 454f, 484 antipode, 183, 197, 316 advection, 61 apex, 189 advective derivative, 108 Apollo program, 16 aeolian processes, 173 Apollo spacecraft, 95, 185, 196–197, 267f, 316, 341 aerodynamic drag, 49, 55, 102, 347–348, 416 apparition, 407 aerogel, 432f, 432 aqueous alteration, 401 AGB star (asymptotic giant branch), 527 arachnoid, 201, 202f agregates, 528 Archimedean spiral, 287f airglow, 135 Archimedes principle, 251 625 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09161-0 - Planetary Sciences: Updated Second Edition Imke de Pater and Jack J. -
Highlights and Discoveries from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory1
Highlights and Discoveries from the Chandra X-ray Observatory1 H Tananbaum1, M C Weisskopf2, W Tucker1, B Wilkes1 and P Edmonds1 1Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. 2 NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center, ZP12, 320 Sparkman Drive, Huntsville, AL 35805. Abstract. Within 40 years of the detection of the first extrasolar X-ray source in 1962, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has achieved an increase in sensitivity of 10 orders of magnitude, comparable to the gain in going from naked-eye observations to the most powerful optical telescopes over the past 400 years. Chandra is unique in its capabilities for producing sub-arcsecond X-ray images with 100-200 eV energy resolution for energies in the range 0.08<E<10 keV, locating X-ray sources to high precision, detecting extremely faint sources, and obtaining high resolution spectra of selected cosmic phenomena. The extended Chandra mission provides a long observing baseline with stable and well-calibrated instruments, enabling temporal studies over time-scales from milliseconds to years. In this report we present a selection of highlights that illustrate how observations using Chandra, sometimes alone, but often in conjunction with other telescopes, have deepened, and in some instances revolutionized, our understanding of topics as diverse as protoplanetary nebulae; massive stars; supernova explosions; pulsar wind nebulae; the superfluid interior of neutron stars; accretion flows around black holes; the growth of supermassive black holes and their role in the regulation of star formation and growth of galaxies; impacts of collisions, mergers, and feedback on growth and evolution of groups and clusters of galaxies; and properties of dark matter and dark energy.