The Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) Mission for the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS)

The NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) is an advanced study of Earth's long-term global changes of solid Earth, its atmosphere, and oceans and includes a coordinated collection of satellites, data systems, and modeling. The EOS program was conceived in the 1980s as part of NASA's Earth System Enterprise (ESE). The Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) is one of about 20 missions planned for the EOS program, and the SORCE measurement objectives include the total solar irradiance (TSI) and solar spectral irradiance (SSI) that are two of the 24 key measurement parameters defined for the EOS program. The SORCE satellite was launched in January 2003, and its observations are improving the understanding and generating new inquiry regarding how and why solar variability occurs and how it affects Earth's energy balance, atmosphere, and long-term climate changes.     

Stochastic data in astronomy: Fourier analysis of highly nonuniform time series

The features of the CLEAN algorithm for Fourier analysis of time series with data separated by long pauses are analyzed in detail. Estimates are obtained for the limits of variability of the parameters of harmonic components that can be determined on a specified time grid. This analysis are used to search for harmonic components in the spectral line profile variations of the star Ori A (O8III) obtained in 2001 with the 1 m telescope at the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences.Translated from Astrofizika, Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 87–100 (February 2005).     

Kinetic Properties of CMEs Corrected for the Projection Effect

Observations of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) with coronagraphs are subject to a projection effect, which results in statistical errors in many properties of CMEs, such as the eruption speed and the angular width. In this paper, we develop a method to obtain the velocity and angular width distributions of CMEs corrected for the projection effect, and then re-examine the relationship between CMEs and the associated flares. We find that (1) the mean eruption speed is 792 km s⁻¹ and the mean angular width is 59^∘, compared to the values of 549 km s⁻¹ and 77^∘, respectively before the correction; (2) after the correction, the weak correlation between CME speeds and the GOES X-ray peak flux of the flares gets unexpectedly poorer; and (3) before correction, there is a weak correlation between the angular width and the speed of CMEs, whereas the correlation is absent after the correction.     

Final analysis of ELAIS 15-μm observations: method, reduction and catalogue

We present the final analysis of the European Large Area Infrared Space Observatory ( ISO ) Survey (ELAIS) 15-μm observations, carried out with the ISO Camera (ISOCAM) instrument on board the ISO .
The data-reduction method, known as the Lari Method, is based on a mathematical model of the behaviour of the detector and was specifically designed for the detection of faint sources in ISOCAM/ISO Photopolarimeter (ISOPHOT) data. The method is fully interactive and leads to very reliable and complete source lists.
The resulting catalogue includes 1923 sources detected with signal-to-noise ratio of  > 5  in the 0.5–100 mJy flux range and over an area of 10.85 deg² split into four fields, making it the largest non-serendipitous extragalactic source catalogue obtained to date from the ISO data.
This paper presents the concepts underlying the data-reduction method together with its latest enhancements. The data-reduction process, the production and basic properties of the resulting catalogue are discussed. The catalogue quality is assessed by means of detailed simulations, optical identifications and comparison with previous analyses.     

Modelling the advance–retreat cycle of a tidewater glacier with simple sediment dynamics

We present a simple coupled glacier-sediment model to simulate the evolution of a tidewater glacier. The model is based on a consideration of the total mass budget of a glacier, whereas ice mechanics are fully parameterized. The calving rate at the glacier terminus is assumed to be proportional to the water depth. We show that the formation of a morainic shoal has a profound influence on the response of a tidewater glacier to climatic forcing. For a slow periodic forcing of the equilibrium-line altitude, the model glacier advances steadily into the estuary, builds up a submarine terminal moraine, and then retreats rapidly when a critical point is hit. For a slowly increasing equilibrium-line altitude, at a rate as low as 1 m per 5 years, we find terminus retreat rates of up to 10 km in 50 years. Our model suggests that, although the response of tidewater glaciers to external forcing is strongly nonlinear, the onset of retreat is controlled by climate change.     

Bayesian foreground analysis with CMB data

The quality of CMB observations has improved dramatically in the last few years, and will continue to do so in the coming decade. Over a wide range of angular scales, the uncertainty due to instrumental noise is now small compared to the cosmic variance. One may claim with some justification that we have entered the era of precision CMB cosmology. However, some caution is still warranted: The errors due to residual foreground contamination in the CMB power spectrum and cosmological parameters remain largely unquantified, and the effect of these errors on important cosmological parameters such as the optical depth τ and spectral index n_s is not obvious. A major goal for current CMB analysis efforts must therefore be to develop methods that allow us to propagate such uncertainties from the raw data through to the final products. Here we review a recently proposed method that may be a first step towards that goal.     

Relative velocities among accreting planetesimals in binary systems: The circumprimary case

We investigate classical planetesimal accretion in a binary star system of separation ab?50 AU by numerical simulations, with particular focus on the region at a distance of 1 AU from the primary. The planetesimals orbit the primary, are perturbed by the companion and are in addition subjected to a gas drag force. We concentrate on the problem of relative velocities Δv among planetesimals of different sizes. For various stellar mass ratios and binary orbital parameters we determine regions where Δv exceed planetesimal escape velocities vesc (thus preventing runaway accretion) or even the threshold velocity vero for which erosion dominates accretion. Gaseous friction has two crucial effects on the velocity distribution: it damps secular perturbations by forcing periastron alignment of orbits, but at the same time the size-dependence of this orbital alignment induces a significant Δv increase between bodies of different sizes. This differential phasing effect proves very efficient and almost always increases Δv to values preventing runaway accretion, except in a narrow eb?0 domain. The erosion threshold Δv>vero is reached in a wide (ab,eb) space for small <10-km planetesimals, but in a much more limited region for bigger ?50-km objects. In the intermediate vesc<Δv<vero domain, a possible growth mode would be the type II runaway growth identified by Kortenkamp et al. [Kortenkamp, S., Wetherill, G., Inaba, S., 2001. Science 293, 1127-1129].     

The scattered disk as a source of Halley-type comets

We investigate a new dynamical mechanism for producing Halley-type comets from the scattered disk of comets. Levison and Duncan [Levison, H., Duncan, M., 1997. Icarus 127, 13-32] and Duncan and Levison [Duncan, M., Levison, H., 1997. Science 276, 1670-1672] showed that a significant number of objects leave the scattered disk by evolving to semi-major axes greater than 1000 AU. We find that once these objects reach semi-major axes on the order of ¹⁰⁴ AU, a significant fraction immediately have their perihelia driven inward by the galactic tides. Approximately 0.01% of the objects that reach ¹⁰⁴ AU then evolve onto orbits similar to the observed Halley-like comets due to gravitational interactions with the giant planets. The orbital element distribution resulting from this process is statistically consistent with observations. We discuss the implications of this model for the number of objects in the scattered disk in the text. The model predicts a temporal variation in the influx of HTCs with a period of ∼118 Myr. At the peak, the model predicts that there should be roughly 10 times as many HTCs as currently observed (i.e., there should be weak HTC showers). However, the model may inflate the importance of these showers because it does not include the effects of passing stars and giant molecular clouds.