Mapping the CMB sky: THE BOOMERanG experiment

We describe the BOOMERanG experiment, a stratospheric balloon telescope intended to measure the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy at angular scales between a few degrees and ten arcminutes. The experiment has been optimized for a long duration (7 to 14 days) flight circumnavigating Antarctica at the end of 1998. A test flight was performed on 30 August 1997 in Texas. The level of performance achieved in the test flight was satisfactory and compatible with the requirements for the long duration flight.     

“Falling Star”: Software for Processing of Double-Station TV Meteor Observations

Software named “Falling Star” has been developed for digital processing of double-station TV meteor observations. It was designed for measurement and calculation of both kinematic and photometric parameters of faint meteors observed with any video system. Data from video recordings are first digitized as standard AVI files, and then converted into the software’s TVS (TV sequence) format. Additional astronomical information like date, time of observations, geographic position of point of the observation and horizontal coordinates of TV camera optical axis orientation are added to the files. These parameters allow the right ascension and declination of the optical center of camera for the moment of meteor flight to be calculated. “Falling Star” includes a range of automated procedures for the identification of frame stars with star catalogues, search of movable meteor-like objects inside frame, calculation of equatorial coordinates and photometry. Finally, meteor trajectory parameters, orbital elements and brightness curves are calculated. Errors of calculations are determined using Monte-Carlo method.     

Ballistic representation for kinematic access

This work uses simple two-body orbital dynamics to initially determine the kinematic access for a ballistic vehicle. Primarily this analysis was developed to assess when a rocket body might conjunct with an orbiting satellite platform. A family of access opportunities can be represented as a volume for a specific rocket relative to its launch platform. Alternately, the opportunities can be represented as a geographical footprint relative to aircraft or satellite position that encompasses all possible launcher locations for a specific rocket. A thrusting rocket is treated as a ballistic vehicle that receives all its energy at launch and follows a coasting trajectory. To do so, the rocket’s burnout energy is used to find its equivalent initial velocity for a given launcher’s altitude. Three kinematic access solutions are then found that account for spherical Earth rotation. One solution finds the maximum range for an ascent-only trajectory while another solution accommodates a descending trajectory. In addition, the ascent engagement for the descending trajectory is used to depict a rapid access scenario. These preliminary solutions are formulated to address ground-, sea-, or air-launched vehicles.     

Creation,detection, and evolution of Jupiter Trojan families

An investigation is carried out looking at correlations between the orbital elements of collisional targets and projectiles, estimating the number of interlopers in Trojan collisional families, and at the possibility of determining the ages of the Jupiter Trojan families by orbital integration. Real Trojans are integrated and close encounters are recorded in order to evaluate collisional circumstances between Trojans. Fictitious collisional families are created and integrated for 10 MJyr (million Julian years) forward in time and back again to the time of the collision in order to check the performance of the integrator, and the behaviour of the fictitious collisional fragments. Proper elements are calculated for the detection of family clustering using the hierarchically clustering method. This method presents little difficulty finding fictitious families in the Trojan swarms even in areas with densely populated backgrounds. However, even when the background is relatively sparse in objects, several interlopers can be connected to the family at velocity differences below 100 m s^–1. On the other hand, in densely populated backgrounds the contamination of interlopers should be less than 30%. Providing gravity is the only significant force acting on the Trojans and resonance effects are weak, the shape the collision fragments create in the proper element space are preserved on the GJyr scale, and collisions can be tracked with orbital integrations for ages of at least 100 MJyr. However, the shape of artificial families does not correspond to suggested real families. This points to the need of including non‐gravitational forces such as the Yarkovsky effect in order to simulate the family evolution. As a consequence age determination by orbital integration might be severely restricted and previous investigations involving long term orbital integrations might have tobe recalculated (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Analytical design methods for transfer trajectories between the Earth and the Lunar Orbital Station

Lunar Orbital Station (LOS) is proposed as support of manned lunar exploration missions. A fast-converging iteration method for determining the initial conditions of two-impulse transfer trajectories between the Earth and the LOS is proposed based on the patched conic approach. In the Earth phase, near Earth state is connected with the state at the lunar sphere of influence (LSOI) based on the relationship between the initial and terminal orbital state. Then, an analytical algorithm is proposed to find the state vector at LSOI, such to satisfy the LOS orbital constraint. An iterative process is finally adopted to generate favorable initial solutions that satisfy the constraint near the Earth and at the perilune. The algorithm convergence is investigated, and two types of transfer trajectories are found for both Earth-LOS and LOS-Earth transfer. Based on the algorithm, orbital transfer windows, velocity impulse and time of flight are analyzed in the typical years 2025 and 2034. At last, the initial solution is corrected with a high fidelity model based on the active-set method, which shows the precision of this algorithm. The novel procedure for the transfer trajectories design and the analytic result can be used as a basis for rapid mission evaluation and design for future manned lunar missions based on the LOS.     

The Kinematic Theory of Solar Dynamo

Generation of the Sun‘s magnetic fields by self-inductive processes in the solar electrically conducting interior, the solar dynamo theory, is a fundamentally important subject in astrophysics. The kinematic dynamo theory concerns how the magnetic fields are produced by kinematically possible flows without being constrained by the dynamic equation. We review a number of basic aspects of the kinematic dynamo theory, including the magnetohydrodynamic approximation for the dynamo equation, the impossibility of dynamo action with the solar differential rotation, the Cowling‘s anti-dynamo theorem in the solar context, the turbulent alpha effect and recently constructed three-dimensional interface dynamos controlled by the solar tachocline at the base of the convection zone.     

Young Meteor Swarms Near the Sun: I. Statistical Correlation of Meteors with Families of Short-Perihelion Comets

We examine the hypothesis about the formation of meteor streams near the Sun. Families of short-perihelion orbit comets, many of which pass just a few radii from the solar surface at perihelion and have high dust production efficiencies, are assumed to be candidates for the parent bodies of these meteor streams. Our statistical analysis of orbital and kinematic parameters for short-perihelion meteoric particles recorded at the Earth and comets from the Kreutz family and the Marsden, Kracht, and Meyer groups led us to certain conclusions regarding the proposed hypothesis. We found a correlation between the ecliptic longitude of perihelion for comet and meteor orbits and the perihelion distance. This correlation may be suggestive of either a genetic connection between the objects of these two classes or the result of an as yet unknown mechanism that equally acts on short-perihelion comet and meteor orbits. A reliable conclusion about this genetic connection can be reached for the meteors that belong to the Arietids stream and the Marsden comet group.     

X-ray and optical orbital modulation of EXO 0748-676: A co-variability study using XMM-Newton

We present a multi-wavelength timing study of the eclipsing low mass X-ray binary EXO 0748-676 (UY Vol) using XMM-Newton when the source was in a hard spectral state. The orbital optical and X-ray light curves show a fairly large amount of intensity modulation in the 7 observations taken during September-November, 2003, covering 36 complete binary orbits of EXO 0748-676. While assessing the non-burst variability, simultaneously in the optical and X-ray light curves, we find that they are not correlated at reprocessing or orbital time-scales, but are weakly correlated at a few 1000s of seconds time-scales. Although a large fraction of the optical emission is likely to be due to reprocessing, the lack of significant correlation and presence of large variability in the orbital X-ray and optical light curves is probably due to structures and structural changes in the accretion disk that produce, and sometimes mask the reprocessed signal in varying amounts. These disk structures could be induced, at least partly, by irradiation. From the observed modulations seen in the optical light curves, there is strong evidence of accretion disk evolution at time scales of a few hours.     

High resolution spectroscopy in the far UV: Observations of the interstellar medium by IMAPS on ORFEUS-SPAS

The Interstellar Medium Absorption Profile Spectrograph (IMAPS) is an objectivegrating, echelle spectrograph built to observe the spectra of bright, hot stars over the spectral region 950–1150Å, below the wavelength coverage of HST. This instrument has a high wavelength resolving power, making it especially well suited for studies of interstellar absorption lines. Following a series of sounding rocket flights in the 1980's, IMAPS flew on its first Shuttle-launched orbital mission in September 1993, as a partner in the ORFEUS-SPAS program sponsored by the US and German Space Agencies, NASA and DARA.On ORFEUS-SPAS, IMAPS spent one day of orbital time observing the spectra of 10 O- and early B-type stars. In addition to outlining how IMAPS works, we document some special problems that had an influence on the data, and we explain the specific steps in data reduction that were employed to overcome them. This discussion serves as a basic source of information for people who may use archival data from this flight, as well as those who are interested in some specific properties of the data that will be presented in forthcoming research papers.IMAPS is scheduled to fly once again on ORFEUS-SPAS in late 1996. On this flight, 50% of the observing time available for IMAPS and two other spectrographs on the mission will be available to guest observers.     

Semi-analytic solution of a two-body problem with drag

An approximate semi-analytic solution of a two-body problem with drag is presented. The solution describesnon-lifting orbital motion in a central, inverse-square gravitational field. Drag deceleration is a non-linear function of velocity relative to a rotating atmosphere due to dynamic pressure and velocity-dependent drag coefficient. Neglected are aerodynamic lift, gravitational perturbations of the inverse-square field, and kinematic accelerations due to coordinate frame rotation at earth angular rate. With these simplifications, it is shown that (i) orbital motion occurs in an earth-fixed invariable plane defined by the radius and relative velocity vectors, and (ii) the simplified equations of motion are autonomous and independent of central angle measured in the invariable plane. Consequently, reduction of the differential equations from sixth to second-order is possible. Solutions for the radial and circumferential components of relative velocity are reduced to quadratures with respect to radial distance. Since the independent variable is radial distance, the solutions are singular at zero radial velocity (e. g., for circular orbits). General atmospheric density and drag coefficient models may be used to evaluate the velocity quadratures. The central angle and time variables are recovered from two additional quadratures involving the velocity quadratures. Theoretical results are compared with numerical simulation results.Presently affiliated with AVCO Systems Division, Wilmington, MA 01887, U.S.A.     

Orbits of galactic globular clusters

New absolute proper motions of the two globular clusters NGC 4147 and NGC 6218 and a specific model of galactic mass distribution are used to integrate their orbits numerically. The resulting values of orbital parameters and their variation due to the uncertainty of the initial values are discussed. Furthermore, the deviations from the time average of the virial theorem are determined.     

The Flora Family: A Case of the Dynamically Dispersed Collisional Swarm?

Asteroid families are believed to originate by catastrophic disruptions of large asteroids. They are nowadays identified as clusters in the proper orbital elements space. The proper elements are analytically defined as constants of motion of a suitably simplified dynamical system. Indeed, they are generally nearly constant on a 10⁷-10⁸-year time scale. Over longer time intervals, however, they may significantly change, reflecting the accumulation of the tiny nonperiodic evolutions provided by chaos and nonconservative forces. The most important effects leading to a change of the proper orbital elements are (i) the chaotic diffusion in narrow mean motion resonances, (ii) the Yarkovsky nongravitational force, and (iii) the gravitational impulses received at close approaches with large asteroids. A natural question then arises: How are the size and shape of an asteroid family modified due to evolution of the proper orbital elements of its members over the family age? In this paper, we concentrate on the dynamical dispersion of the proper eccentricity and inclination, which occurs due to (i), but with the help of (ii) and (iii). We choose the Flora family as a model case because it is unusually dispersed in eccentricity and inclination and, being located in the inner main belt, is intersected by a large number of effective mean motion resonances with Mars and Jupiter. Our results suggest that the Flora family dynamically disperses on a few 10⁸-year time scale and that its age may be significantly less than 10⁹ years. We discuss the possibility that the parent bodies of the Flora family and of the ordinary L chondrite meteorites are the same object. In a broader sense, this work suggests that the common belief that the present asteroid families are simple images of their primordial dynamical structure should be revised.     

Design of lunar landing trajectory under constraints

The design of a lunar landing trajectory which satisfies certain constraints is considered and discussed. The constraints are of two kinds, kinetic constraints, which deal with the relative positions among the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the spacecraft and tracking stations, and dynamic constraints, which deal with the orbital motion of the spacecraft. After a discussion of the characteristics of lunar flight trajectory, a method of designing standard flight trajectory is suggested that satisfies the constraints. This method is applied to the Chinese lunar landing flight and to the pre-design of the orbit of a lunar satellite.     

从地面发射月球探测器的窗口选择

典型的月球探测器飞行轨道包括地球停泊轨道段、地月转移轨道段、月球卫星轨道段和着月轨道段。首先介绍了设计从地面发射月球探测器轨道典型的约束条件;然后,借助于二体假设,建立解析表达式,分析各种约束对窗口选择的影响,给出了各轨道段概略的飞行时间和粗窗口;最后,利用精确的探测器轨道动力学模型,计算精窗口,并给出了一则算例,所得结论可为月球探测器轨道发射、轨道设计提供依据。     

Evidence for a meteoritic origin of the September 15, 2007, Carancas crater

Abstract— On September 15th, 2007, around 11:45 local time in Peru, near the Bolivian border, the atmospheric entry of a meteoroid produced bright lights in the sky and intense detonations. Soon after, a crater was discovered south of Lake Titicaca. These events have been detected by the Bolivian seismic network and two infrasound arrays operating for the Comprehensive Nuclear‐Test‐Ban Treaty Organization, situated at about 80 and 1620 km from the crater. The localization and origin time computed with the seismic records are consistent with the reported impact. The entry elevation and azimuthal angles of the trajectory are estimated from the observed signal time sequences and back‐azimuths. From the crater diameter and the airwave amplitudes, the kinetic energy, mass and explosive energy are calculated. Using the estimated velocity of the meteoroid and similarity criteria between orbital elements, an association with possible parent asteroids is attempted. The favorable setting of this event provides a unique opportunity to evaluate physical and kinematic parameters of the object that generated the first actual terrestrial meteorite impact seismically recorded.     

Information from the Kinematics of F and G Stars in the Solar Neighborhood

We have calculated the orbital parameters for 90 stars in Chen et al. and updated the kinematic data for stars in Edvardsson et al. by using the accurate Hipparcos parallaxes and proper motions, and recalculated the \\\\\\\\\\\\-element abundances in Edvardsson et al. in a way consistent with Chen et al. The two sets of data are combined in a study of stellar populations and characteristics of F & G stars in the solar neighborhood. We confirm the result of Chen et al. that a distinguishable group of stars may belong to the thick disk rather than the thin disk. The ages for the stars are determined using the theoretical isochrones of VandenBerg et al. The age-metallicity relation is investigated for different subgroups according to distance from the sun and galactic orbital parameters. It is found that a mixing of stars with different orbital parameters significantly affect the age-metallicity relation for the disk. Stars with orbits confined to the solar circle all have metallicities [Fe/H] > -0.3 irresp     

Searching for the source of short-period comet nuclei: The direction of the spatial migration of comets

An attempt is made to determine the spatial location of the main source of short-period comet nuclei. Numerical calculations for the orbital evolution of Jupiter family comets, medium-period comets, and Centaurs are used to show that the orbits of small solar system bodies tend to evolve in the direction of increasing semimajor axes. This relates to bodies that can experience encounters with planets and whose orbital evolution is shaped by gravitational perturbations. It is concluded that there is good reason to search for the main source of the nuclei of Jupiter family comets at distances of 6 AU or less from the sun.     

Tidal evolution in close binary systems,II

The aim of the present investigation will be to determine the explicit forms of differential equations which govern secular perturbations of the orbital elements of close binary systems in the plane of the orbit (i.e., of the semi-major axisA, eccentricitye, and longitude of the periastron ), arising from the lag of dynamical tides due to viscosity of stellar material. The results obtained are exact for any value of orbital eccentricity comprised between 0e<1; and include the effects produced by the second, third and fourth-harmonic dynamical tides, as well as by axial rotation with arbitrary inclination of the equator to the orbital plane.In Section 2 following brief introductory remarks the variational equations of the problem of plane motion will be set up in terms of the rectangular componentsR, S, W of disturbing accelerations with respect to a revolving system of coordinates. The explicit form of these coefficients will be established in Section 3 to the degree of accuracy to which squares and higher powers of quantities of the order of superficial distortion can be ignored. Section 4 will be devoted to a derivation of the explicit form of the variational equations for the case of a perturbing function arising from axial rotation; and in Section 5 we shall derive variational equations which govern the perturbation of orbital elements caused by lagging dynamical tides.Numerical integrations of these equations, which govern the tidal evolution of close binary systems prompted by viscous friction at constant mass, are being postponed for subsequent investigations.Prepared at the Lunar Science Institute, Houston, Texas, under the joint support of the Universities Space Research Association, Charlottesville, Virginia, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas, under Contract No. NSR 09-051-001. This paper constitutes Lunar Science Institute Contribution no. 100.Normally at the Department of Astronomy, University of Manchester, England.     

NIGHTGLOW: an instrument to measure the Earth’s nighttime ultraviolet glow—results from the first engineering flight

We have designed and built an instrument to measure and monitor the “nightglow” of the Earth’s atmosphere in the near ultraviolet (NUV). In this paper we describe the design of this instrument, called NIGHTGLOW. NIGHTGLOW is designed to be flown from a high altitude research balloon, and circumnavigate the globe. NIGHTGLOW is a NASA, University of Utah, and New Mexico State University project. A test flight took place from Palestine, Texas on July 5, 2000, lasting about 8 h. The instrument performed well and landed safely in Stiles, Texas with little damage. The resulting measurements of the NUV nightglow are compared with previous measurements from sounding rockets and balloons.     

The Effect of Tidal Interaction with a Gas Disk on Formation of Terrestrial Planets

We have performed N-body simulation on final accretion stage of terrestrial planets, including the effect of damping of eccentricity and inclination caused by tidal interaction with a remnant gas disk. As a result of runway and oligarchic accretion, about 20 Mars-sized protoplanets would be formed in nearly circular orbits with orbital separation of several to ten Hill radius. The orbits of the protoplanets would be eventually destabilized by long-term mutual gravity and/or secular resonance of giant gaseous planets. The protoplanets would coalesce with each other to form terrestrial planets through the orbital crossing. Previous N-body simulations, however, showed that the final eccentricities of planets are around 0.1, which are about 10 times higher than the present eccentricities of Earth and Venus. The obtained high eccentricities are the remnant of orbital crossing. We included the effect of eccentricity damping caused by gravitational interaction with disk gas as a drag force (“gravitational drag”) and carried out N-body simulation of accretion of protoplanets. We start with 15 protoplanets with 0.2M⊕ and integrate the orbits for 10⁷ years, which is consistent with the observationally inferred disk lifetime (in some runs, we start with 30 protoplanets with 0.1M⊕). In most runs, the damping time scale, which is equivalent to the strength of the drag force, is kept constant throughout each run in order to clarify the effects of the damping. We found that the planets' final mass, spatial distribution, and eccentricities depend on the damping time scale. If the damping time scale for a 0.2M⊕ mass planet at 1 AU is longer than 10⁸ years, planets grow to Earth's size, but the final eccentricities are too high as in gas-free cases. If it is shorter than 10⁶ years, the eccentricities of the protoplanets cannot be pumped up, resulting in not enough orbital crossing to make Earth-sized planets. Small planets with low eccentricities are formed with small orbital separation. On the other hand, if it is between 10⁶ and 10⁸ years, which may correspond to a mostly depleted disk (0.01-0.1% of surface density of the minimum mass model), some protoplanets can grow to about the size of Earth and Venus, and the eccentricities of such surviving planets can be diminished within the disk lifetime. Furthermore, in innermost and outermost regions in the same system, we often find planets with smaller size and larger eccentricities too, which could be analogous to Mars and Mercury. This is partly because the gravitational drag is less effective for smaller mass planets, and partly due to the “edge effect,” which means the innermost and outermost planets tend to remain without collision. We also carried out several runs with time-dependent drag force according to depletion of a gas disk. In these runs, we used exponential decay model with e-folding time of 3×10⁶ years. The orbits of protoplanets are stablized by the eccentricity damping in the early time. When disk surface density decays to ?1% of the minimum mass disk model, the damping force is no longer strong enough to inhibit the increase of the eccentricity by distant perturbations among protoplanets so that the orbital crossing starts. In this disk decay model, a gas disk with 10⁻⁴-10⁻³ times the minimum mass model still remains after the orbital crossing and accretional events, which is enough to damp the eccentricities of the Earth-sized planets to the order of 0.01. Using these results, we discuss a possible scenario for the last stage of terrestrial planet formation.