Astrometry with Virtual Observatories

With the advent of virtual observatories, most astrometry-oriented projects being currently developed—and those to come in the near future—will be greatly enriched. Among these projects it is worth mentioning double stars and multiple systems, proper-motion detections, identification of lost high-proper-motion stars, a detailed census of open cluster members, and precovery of natural satellites, minor planets and comets. A brief discussion of some of these studies is presented. To accomplish the goals proposed by the virtual observatories concept, a massive amount of high-quality astrometric data is needed in advance. It is shown that today's astrometry is about to ready to face these new challenges.     

Satellite measurements of the moon's magnetic field: A preliminary report

A preliminary analysis of the data from the UCLA magnetometer on board the Apollo 15 subsatellite indicates that remnant magnetization is a characteristic property of the Moon, that its distribution is such as to produce a rather complex pattern or fine structure, and that a detailed mapping of its distribution is feasible with the present experiment. The analysis also shows that lunar induction fields produced by transients in the interplanetary magnetic field are detectable at the satellite orbit so that in principle the magnetometer data can be used to determine the latitudinal and longitudinal as well as radial dependences of the distribution of electrical conductivity within the Moon. Finally, the analysis indicates that the plasma void or diamagnetic cavity which forms behind the Moon when the Moon is in the solar wind, is detectable at the satellite's orbit and that the flow of the solar wind near the limbs is usually rather strongly disturbed.Publication No. 981. Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.     

Radial velocities in the open cluster IC 2602

We determined radial velocities for 25 probable members of the open cluster IC 2602. We identified the stars with variable radial velocity. We improved the orbit of HD 93030, and computed a preliminary orbit for another spectroscopic binary. We discussed with such data the average cluster radial velocity and we compare the incidence of short period binaries among the Main-Sequence members of IC 2602 with the incidence for other clusters with different values of the average axial rotation of their members.Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under contract with the National Science Foundation.     

Appearance of Saturn’s F ring azimuthal channels for the anti-alignment configuration between the ring and Prometheus

In this article we explore the aspect of the F ring with respect to the anti-alignment configuration between the ring and Prometheus. We focus our attention on the shape of the F ring’s azimuthal channels which were first reported by Porco et al. (Porco, C.C., Baker, E., Barbara, J., Beurle, K., Brahic, A., Burns, J.A., Charnoz, S., Cooper, N., Dawson, D.D., Del Genio, A.D., Denk, T., Dones, L., Dyudina, U., Evans, M.W., Giese, B., Grazier, K., Helfenstein, P., Ingersoll, A.P., Jacobson, R.A., Johnson, T.V., McEwen, A., Murray, C.D., Neukum, G., Owen, W.M., Perry, J., Roatsch, T., Spitale, J., Squyres, S., Thomas, P., Tiscareno, M., Turtle, E., Vasavada, A.R., Veverka, J., Wagner, R., West, R. [2005] Science, 307, 1226-1236) and numerically explored by Murray et al. (Murray, C.D., Chavez, C., Beurle, K., Cooper, N., Evans, M.W., Burns, J.A., Porco, C.C. [2005] Nature 437, 1326-1329) who found excellent agreement between Cassini’s ISS reprojected images and their numerical model via a direct comparison. We find that for anti-alignment the channels are wider and go deeper inside the ring material. From our numerical model we find a new feature, an island in the middle of the channel. This island is made up of the particles that have been perturbed the most by Prometheus and only appears when this satellite is close to apoapsis. In addition, plots of the anti-alignment configuration for different orbital stages of Prometheus are obtained and discussed here.     

Anelastic convection-driven dynamo benchmarks: A finite element model

We present a fully non-linear, anelastic convection and dynamo model in a rotating spherical shell that is based on a finite element method. It is shown that both the hydrodynamic steadily drifting convection and convection-driven steadily drifting dynamo are in satisfactory agreement with the anelastic convection and dynamo benchmark based on the pseudo-spectral method (Jones, C.A., Boronski, P., Brun, A.S., Glatzmaier, G.A., Gastine, T., Miesch, M.S., Wicht, J. [2011]. Icarus, 216, 120–135).