The search for extrasolar giant planets using integral field spectroscopy: Simulations

We present here simulations of extrasolar planets detections obtained using a combination of extreme adaptive optics and integral field spectroscopy. The simulation code, written for IDL, provides images and, in particular, spectra, taking into account realistic Speckle Noise, AO correction effects and specific instrumental features. A detailed study has been done for ESO VLT telescopes (8.2 m), within the Phase A of the CHEOPS project, but the code is particularly flexible and can be updated for larger telescope diameters (ELTs) in order to give a realistic estimate of the detection limits, for giant telescopes, in standard conditions of seeing.     

The fall and recovery of the Tagish Lake meteorite

Abstract— The Tagish Lake C2 (ungrouped) carbonaceous chondrite fall of January 18, 2000, delivered ?10 kg of one of the most primitive and physically weak meteorites yet studied. In this paper, we report the detailed circumstances of the fall and the recovery of all documented Tagish Lake fragments from a strewnfield at least 16 km long and 3 to 4 km wide. Nearly 1 kg of “pristine” meteorites were collected one week after the fall before new snow covered the strewnfield; the majority of the recovered mass was collected during the spring melt. Ground eyewitnesses and a variety of instrument‐recorded observations of the Tagish Lake fireball provide a refined estimate of the fireball trajectory. From its calculated orbit and its similarity to the remotely sensed properties of the D‐ and P‐class asteroids, the Tagish Lake carbonaceous chondrite apparently represents these outer belt asteroids. The cosmogenic nuclide results and modeled production indicate a prefall radius of 2.1–2.4 m (corresponding to 60–90 tons) consistent with the observed fireball energy release. The bulk oxygen‐isotope compositions plot just below the terrestrial fractionation line (TFL), following a trend similar to the CM meteorite mixing line. The bulk density of the Tagish Lake material (1.64 ± 0.02 g/cm³) is the same, within uncertainty, as the total bulk densities of several C‐class and especially D‐ and P‐class asteroids. The high microporosity of Tagish Lake samples (?40%) provides an obvious candidate material for the composition of low bulk density primitive asteroids.     

The fall,recovery, and classification of the Park Forest meteorite

Abstract— On the night of March 26, 2003, a large meteorite broke up and fell upon the south suburbs of Chicago. The name Park Forest, for the village that is at the center of the strewnfield, has been approved by the nomenclature committee of the Meteoritical Society. Satellite data indicate that the bolide traveled from the southwest toward the northeast. The strewnfield has a southeast‐northwest trend; however, this is probably due to the effects of strong westerly winds at high altitudes. Its very low ⁵⁶Co and very high ⁶⁰Co activities indicate that Park Forest had a preatmospheric mass that was at least ～900 kg and could have been as large as ～7 times 10³ kg, of which only ～30 kg have been recovered. The average compositions of olivine and low‐Ca pyroxene, Fa_{24.7 ± 1.1} and Fs_{20.8 ± 0.7}, respectively, and its bulk oxygen isotopic composition, δ¹⁸O = +4.68%o, δ¹⁷O = +3.44%o, show that Park Forest is an L chondrite. The ferromagnesian minerals are well equilibrated, chondrules are easily recognized, and maskelynite is mostly ≤50 μm across. Based on these observations, we classify Park Forest as type 5. The meteorite has been strongly shocked, and based on the presence of maskelynite, mosaicism and planar deformation features in olivine, undulatory extinction in pyroxene, and glassy veins, the shock stage is S5. The meteorite is a monomict breccia, consisting of light‐colored, angular to rounded clasts in a very dark host. The light and dark lithologies have essentially identical mineral and oxygen isotopic compositions. Their striking difference in appearance is due to the presence of a fine, pervasive network of sulfide veins in the dark lithology, resulting in very short optical path lengths. The dark lithology probably formed from the light lithology in an impact that formed a sulfide‐rich melt and injected it into cracks.     

GALACSI – The ground layer adaptive optics system for MUSE

MUSE, the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, is an adaptive optics (AO)-assisted Integral Field Spectrograph, currently in the Preliminary Design Phase as a second generation instrument for the VLT. MUSE will feature two modes, each with an associated AO mode. The first mode is the wide field mode, mainly aiming at the study of high redshift galaxies. For this mode, the AO system has to deliver an improvement of at least a factor of two over the full 1′ × 1′ field of view. The second mode, the narrow field mode, aims at the high-resolution spectroscopy of nearby extended objects, for example, galaxies and globular clusters. For this mode, the AO system will have to deliver near-diffraction limited performance over a small field of view. In this paper, we discuss the trade-offs in the current design of GALACSI – the MUSE AO system – and illustrate with a number of simulations the expected performance in the wide- and narrow field modes.     

Seismic strengthening of existing RC buildings with external cross-laminated timber (CLT) walls hosting an integrated energetic and architectural renovation

Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering - In this study a timber-based integrated solution is presented to solve at once common issues affecting typical reinforced concrete (RC) existing buildings, such...     

National-scale data-driven rainfall induced landslide susceptibility mapping for China by accounting for incomplete landslide data

China is one of the countries where landslides caused the most fatalities in the last decades.The threat that landslide disasters pose to people might even be greater in the future,due to climate change and the increasing urbanization of mountainous areas.A reliable national-scale rainfall induced landslide suscep-tibility model is therefore of great relevance in order to identify regions more and less prone to landslid-ing as well as to develop suitable risk mitigating strategies.However,relying on imperfect landslide data is inevitable when modelling landslide susceptibility for such a large research area.The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of incomplete landslide data on national scale statistical landslide susceptibility modeling for China.In this context,it is aimed to explore the benefit of mixed effects mod-elling to counterbalance associated bias propagations.Six influencing factors including lithology,slope,soil moisture index,mean annual precipitation,land use and geological environment regions were selected based on an initial exploratory data analysis.Three sets of influencing variables were designed to represent different solutions to deal with spatially incomplete landslide information:Set 1(disregards the presence of incomplete landslide information),Set 2(excludes factors related to the incompleteness of landslide data),Set 3(accounts for factors related to the incompleteness via random effects).The vari-able sets were then introduced in a generalized additive model(GAM:Set 1 and Set 2)and a generalized additive mixed effect model(GAMM:Set 3)to establish three national-scale statistical landslide suscep-tibility models:models 1,2 and 3.The models were evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve(AUROC)given by spatially explicit and non-spatial cross-validation.The spatial pre-diction pattern produced by the models were also investigated.The results show that the landslide inven-tory incompleteness had a substantial impact on the outcomes of the statistical landslide susceptibility models.The cross-validation results provided evidence that the three established models performed well to predict model-independent landslide information with median AUROCs ranging from 0.8 to 0.9.However,although Model 1 reached the highest AUROCs within non-spatial cross-validation(median of 0.9),it was not associated with the most plausible representation of landslide susceptibility.The Model 1 modelling results were inconsistent with geomorphological process knowledge and reflected a large extent the underlying data bias.The Model 2 susceptibility maps provided a less biased picture of landslide susceptibility.However,a lower predicted likelihood of landslide occurrence still existed in areas known to be underrepresented in terms of landslide data(e.g.,the Kuenlun Mountains in the northern Tibetan Plateau).The non-linear mixed-effects model(Model 3)reduced the impact of these biases best by introducing bias-describing variables as random effects.Among the three models,Model 3 was selected as the best national-scale susceptibility model for China as it produced the most plausible portray of rainfall induced landslide susceptibility and the highest spatially explicit predictive perfor-mance(median AUROC of spatial cross validation 0.84)compared to the other two models(median AUROCs of 0.81 and 0.79,respectively).We conclude that ignoring landslide inventory-based incomplete-ness can entail misleading modelling results and that the application of non-linear mixed-effect models can reduce the propagation of such biases into the final results for very large areas.     

Consistency of seven different GNSS global ionospheric mapping techniques during one solar cycle

In the context of the International GNSS Service (IGS), several IGS Ionosphere Associated Analysis Centers have developed different techniques to provide global ionospheric maps (GIMs) of vertical total electron content (VTEC) since 1998. In this paper we present a comparison of the performances of all the GIMs created in the frame of IGS. Indeed we compare the classical ones (for the ionospheric analysis centers CODE, ESA/ESOC, JPL and UPC) with the new ones (NRCAN, CAS, WHU). To assess the quality of them in fair and completely independent ways, two assessment methods are used: a direct comparison to altimeter data (VTEC-altimeter) and to the difference of slant total electron content (STEC) observed in independent ground reference stations (dSTEC-GPS). The main conclusion of this study, performed during one solar cycle, is the consistency of the results between so many different GIM techniques and implementations.