Size of the hard X-ray source in the Crab Nebula

The size of the hard X-ray source in the Crab Nebula was observed with scintillation counters on board two balloons at a lunar occulatation on 24 January, 1975. The Gaussian width of the source is 34 (+17, –14) and the center thereof is offset from the pulsar by 6±4 at position angle 102°. The observed time profile can also be fitted to an alternative model of two line sources whose intensities are 48% at 11 and 25.5% at 7 on both sides of the pulsar.Paper presented at the COSPAR Symposium on Fast Transients in X- and Gamma-Rays, held at Varna, Bulgaria, 29–31 May, 1975.     

CASPIR: A cryogenic array spectrometer imager for the MSSSO 2.3 m telescope

CASPIR is a near-infrared spectrometer/imager being built for the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories' 2.3 m telescope. The instrument is based on a SBRC 256×256 InSb detector array and uses AR-coated Sapphire, MgO, CaF₂, and BaF₂ optics to produce two imaging focal plane scales with 0.5/pixel and 0.25/pixel. Spectral resolving powers of 500 will be achieved through a 1×128 slit with three grisms designed for the J, H, and K bands. IJ, JH, and HK cross-dispersed échelle grisms will achieve resolving powers of 1100 through a 1×15 slit. Coronograph and imaging polarimetry modes will also be available. The various observing configurations are selected via five remotely controlled wheels. The instrument design and system architecture are discussed, and preliminary detector performance figures reported.     

Morphological properties and origin of the photospheric facular granules

From time series of high resolution photographs, morphological properties of the photospheric facular granules were derived. The facular granules are cells of the common granular pattern, brighter than the normal granules when seen between cos = 0.6 and the limb. Their apparent diameter, which decreases towards the limb, is smaller than that of the normal granules: 0.65 and 1.25 respectively at cos = 0.55; their lifetime is 25 min but their bright stage lifetime is only 15 min; they are visible closer to the limb than the normal granules: 1.2 compared to 2–5; the brightening of the facular granules occurs at a faster rate than their fading. From the great similitude of both morphological properties and temperature models of facular and normal granules, it appears possible that the photospheric facular granules are convective cells modified by the presence of a magnetic field of some hundreds Gauss.     

Impulsive phenomena in a small active region

The temporal and spatial variations of EUV emission from a small growing active region were investigated. Frequent localized short term ( few minutes) fluctuations in EUV emission were observed throughout the 7.2 hr interval when the most continuous observations were acquired. Approximately 20% of the 5 x 5 pixels had intensity variations exceeding a factor of 1.3 for the chromospheric L line, a factor of 1.5 for lines formed in the chromospheric-coronal transition region and a factor of 1.4 for the coronal Mg x line. A subflare in the region produced the largest intensity enhancements, ranging from a factor of 2.3 for the chromospheric L line to 8 for the transition region and coronal lines. The EUV fluctuations in this small active region are similar to those observed in coronal bright points, suggesting that impulsive heating is an important, perhaps dominant form of heating the upper chromospheric and lower coronal plasmas in small magnetic bipolar regions. The responsible mechanism most likely involves the rapid release of magnetic energy, possibly associated with the emergence of magnetic flux from lower levels into the chromosphere and corona.     

On the feasibility of correlation tracking at moderate resolution

The SOUP experiment demonstrated that photospheric surface flows can be measured by correlation tracking of white-light intensity features at high resolution (November et al., 1987). In order to assess the feasibility of this technique with observations made at lower resolution, we have applied it to the same SOUP data artificially degraded, but still free of seeing distortion. Comparison with the velocity structures inferred from the original data shows generally good agreement when the resolution is better than about 2. The radial outflow from a sunspot penumbra, however, can only be seen with resolution of better than 1. With resolution of worse than 2, the inferred velocity fields rapidly lose coherence, while resolution of better than 1 yields little improvement. We conclude that apertures as small as 10–14 cm on a space-based platform will be useful for the measurement of large-scale horizontal motions.     

VLA and Trieste observations of type I storms,type IV and pulsations

A prime objective of this experiment was to determine whether type I or IV sources at 333 MHz contain features of small (arc sec) scale. With the VLA, our resolution was better than 4. However, we never observed any structure of size smaller than about 30, with the typical source sizes being between about 40 and 90.Many observations were simultaneous with the Trieste Astronomical Observatory records at 327 MHz. The observations were made on two days in November 1988. On 8 November the observations were of a type I storm about two hours after a major flare. On 14 November they were mostly of the main phase of a type IV event, including pulsations of a kind rarely seen, strongly circularly polarized, and having a well-defined period of about 12 s. The size of the pulsating source was about 40 by 60, and the brightness temperature was about 10⁹ K. We compare these pulsations with those observed earlier.     

High-resolution spectral observation during the impulsive phase of a flare

High-resolution observations of the flare on October 21, 1989 were made with the Domeless Solar Telescope of the Hida Observatory. The following new results have been obtained: (a) during the impulsive phase of the flare, the spectral line asymmetry has spatial fine structures of 1–2; (b) for several points in the flare region the line profile alternatively changes between blue asymmetry and red asymmetry within a few seconds. A possible explanation has been suggested.     

The solar minimum temperature determined by the CO (A 1Π-X 1Σ)

The synthetic Voigt profile of the following transitions (v=0,v=0), (v=0,v=1), (v=1,v=1), (v=1,v=0) have been computed for different concentrations and temperatures of CO and compaed to the measured intensities of the UV sunspot spectrum by a high resolution spectrograph. From this comparison the solar minimum temperature has been determined.     

Radial pulsation of less-massive yellow supergiants

The conclusions of the present paper broadly are: (a) The galactic concentration of doubles by comparing the distributions in galactic latitudes 0°<20° and >40° is nearly twice as large as the galactic concentration of stars in general. (b) The astrographic catalogues are not complete in the fainter magnitudes. (c) The large value of the ratioT:O _k (observed to optical number of pairs) from Kreiken's formula shows that almost all stars in the group 0<d5 and quite a few in the other two groups, viz., 5<d10 and 10<d15 might be shown true binaries. Consequently, Aitken's working definition of a true binary should be extended if it were to include all true binaries. (d) The doubles are probably stars of Population I. (e) The logarithm to the base 10 of the cumulative counts can be represented by an empirical relationA+B(m–1.5)+C(m–1.5)².Communication presented at the International Conference on Astrometric Binaries, held on 13–15 June, 1984, at the Remeis-Sternwarte Bamberg, Germany, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784–1846)     

A deeply embedded companion to LKHα198

The region around the Herbig Ae/Be star LkH198 was imaged at 10m with the CAMIRAS camera at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and the Nordic Optical Telescope. We discovered a deeply embedded companion 6 north of LkH198, which may be responsible for most of the far-infrared emission in the region and for driving the molecular flow. LkH198 appears point-like at our resolution (FWHM 1.3), excluding an extended envelope of transiently heated small grains as the dominant origin of the mid-infrared excess in that star.     

The Hard X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (HXIS)

The HXIS, a joint instrument of the Space Research Laboratory at Utrecht, The Netherlands, and the Department of Space Research of the University of Birmingham, U.K., images the Sun in hard X-rays: Six energy bands in energy range 3.5–30 keV, spatial resolution 8 over Ø 240 and 32 over Ø 624 field of view, and time resolution of 0.5–7 s depending on the mode of operation. By means of a flare flag it alerts all the other SMM instruments when a flare sets in and informs them about the location of the X-ray emission. The experiment should yield information about the position, extension and spectrum of the hard X-ray bursts in flares, their relation to the magnetic field structure and to the quasi-thermal soft X-rays, and about the characteristics and development of type IV electron clouds above flare regions.     

The large-scale pattern formed by the spatial distribution of granules

The spatial distribution of granule sizes at the surface of the sun is investigated. Granules have been separated into two classes: those larger than 1.37 and those smaller, where 1.37 is the critical scale defined by Roudier and Muller (1986). It is found that granules are not distributed at random: large granules appear to be clustered, forming a cellular pattern with a characteristic scale of 7; small granules form a similar and complementary pattern. These patterns are probably related to the mesogranulation.     

Automatic solar image motion measurements

The solar seeing image motion has been monitored electronically and absolutely with a 25 cm telescope at three sites along the ridge at the southern end of the Magdalena Mountains west of Socorro, New Mexico. The uncorrelated component of the variations of the optical flux from two points at opposite limbs of the solar disk was continually monitored in 3 frequencies centred at 0.3, 3 and 30 Hz. The frequency band of maximum signal centred at 3 Hz showed the average absolute value of image motion to be somewhat less than 2 although wide variations from 20 to an extraordinarily quiet day of less than the measurement limit of 1/2 were observed. The observer estimates of combined blurring and image motion were well correlated with electronically measured image motion, but the observer estimates gave a larger value × 2 presumable because the electronic measurement gave only the uncorrelated motion of opposite limbs. Approximately 30% of the total solar time would allow spatial position measurements of solar features to a precision 2 and, from the visual estimates, blurring limited measurements to a precision 4.     

3D: The new MPE near-infrared field imaging spectrometer

3D, the next-generation near-IR spectrometer developed at the MPE, produces in a single integration, a datacube of a 8×8 field characterised by 0.5 resolution in image space and a resolving power of R=1000 over the entire K-band in wavelength space.A detailed account of this work, including results of the first test measurements, will be presented elsewhere (Weitzel et al., in preparation).     

Corrections to the lunisolar precession and the motion of the equinox from proper motions of Cepheids

Corrections to Newcomb's lunisolar precession and to motion of the equinox are evaluated from proper motions of 77 Cepheids, employing recently determined values of their distances. Results are diverse, depending on the weighting method. If the effect of the cosmic dispersion is neglected and ₀ is imposed to be 25 km/s/kpc, thenp ₁=1.1±0.2 and +e = 1.0 ± 0.1 per century in the FK4 system.Presented at IAU Colloquium No. 9, The IAU System of Astronomical Constants, Heidelberg, Germany, August 12–14, 1970.     

New observational results for the solar chromosphere

High resolution photographs of the solar chromosphere have been obtained with the 40-cm refractor of the Athens Observatory and a 0.5 Å Halle H filter. Our best photographs show a resolution of 0.6, which is comparable with the theoretical resolving limit of 0.4, at H. The achieved resolution permitted us to secure some excellent observations of the fine structure of the chromosphere on the disk as well as on the limb. The study of these observations leads to the following results: (a) the bright filaments of the disturbed chromosphere as well as the penumbral ones appear to consist of knots, (b) inside the cells of the chromospheric network of the quiet chromosphere, bright roundish granule-like formations are present, their mean size being of the order of 2500 km. (c) the bright fine mottles seem to lie at the root of the elongated dark ones, each pair of them giving rise to a spicule.     

Characteristics of Mauna Kea relating to the Japan National Large Telescope

The characteristics of the Mauna Kea site are reviewed. An extensive site survey by NOAO during 1984–1985 showed that the average seeing was in the 0.4–0.6 range and thatr ₀ was approximately 30 cm. An image quality study at the UH 88-inch telescope in 1987 showed the free atmosphere seeing was 0.5 and the boundary layer contributed less than 0.25.Paper presented at the Symposium on the JNLT and Related Engineering Developments, Tokyo, November 29–December 2, 1988.     

Some statistical properties of Ellerman bombs

One hundred seventy-eight Ellerman bombs were identified and studied with on- and off-band H filtergrams of two active centers, one near disk center and the other near the east limb. The photographs, taken through a 1/4 Å bandpass filter, occasionally attained resolution as fine as 0.3. The mean duration of bombs at H-2 Å was about 13 min near disk center and 11 min near the limb; these times increase slightly when we observe closer to the core of H. Eighty-six percent of the bombs in the near-limb region and 56% in the disk-center region were seen to be accompanied by ejections of dark material; the ejections were 3–30 long. The ejection length appears to be proportional to the bomb size times the bomb lifetime.     

A morphological study of the solar granulation

Some properties of the photospheric granulation near the centre of the quiet sun have been investigated on the basis of two high-definition Stratoscope photographs. We obtain (1) a number density of 54 granules per 10 × 10, (2) a total number of granules on the whole surface of 6.3 × 10⁶, (3) a mean cell diameter of 1.5 or 1100 km and a mean granule diameter of 1.2 or 850 km, the difference of 250 km being ascribed to the mean width of the dark intergranular lanes, (4) frequency distributions of cell diameters and granule diameters (Figures 1 and 2), and (5) an isophotal map in relative intensity (Figure 3). In general, larger granules are brighter than smaller granules (Figure 4). Cross-section profiles are shown for some granules and intergranular lanes (Figures 5 and 6). These quantities have not yet been corrected for the finite resolution of the telescope.     

Vibrational stability of stars in thermal imbalance

In the first part of this paper, we set up a general formulation of kinematic stability coefficients . We show that the signature of cannot statisfactorily be correlated with the vibrational stability of stars in thermal imbalance.The second part of this paper is devoted to the analysis of the intuitive concept of vibrational stability. Our discussion leads us to identify this notion with Lyapunov's asymptotic stability. We introduce a thermodynamic technique of Lyapunov function construction. The relevance and feasibility of our method is illustrated by applying the procedure to supermassive stars in contraction along the Hayashi line. We analytically show that these stars are vibrationally unstable.