巨早型星系的近红外谱合成

在8000至8670的波长范围内,利用一个由144颗恒星光谱组成的光谱厍,我们对57个巨椭圆和S0星系(M_B<-21)的光谱和它们的平均光谱进行了光谱合成.这个光谐库包括了光谱型为G,K和M的巨星和矮星,它具有的金属丰度[Fe/H]覆盖了-0.1到-0.5的范围,表面重力log g为1.0至5.0.光谱合成的结果表明:巨椭圆和S0星系的金属丰度约为太阳的一倍半;有效表面重力分布在3.2—4.1的范围内;矮星在8400附近光的贡献可与巨星相比较.     

The 1925 meteorite fall near Ellemeet and Serooskerke,the Netherlands

Two meteorites impacted in 1925 around the town of Serooskerke on the isle of Schouwen, the Netherlands. The largest mass is widely known as the “Ellemeet” diogenite, while a second mass, heavily weathered due to environmental exposure, also survived until the present day. This work aims to reconstruct the history of the 1925 fall and for the first time documents the second mass, known as the “Serooskerke,” by integrating a historical and experimental approach. The study of historical news archives and cadastral records redefined the 1925 impact site at N 51°42.086′ E 3°49.789′. Environmental exposure experiments reproducing the effects of rainfall and frost weathering identified the latter as the main cause for the second mass' reported disintegration in the field sometime during the 1925–1926 winter. The bulk mineralogy of the second mass was established using XRD powder diffraction for a 2θ range of 3–70° and was found to be identical to an Ellemeet reference sample. UV/VIS/nIR spectroscopy (300–2500 nm) was subsequently used to broadly compare the second mass to HED clan meteorites Bouvante, EET87503, Johnstown and asteroid 4 Vesta in order to corroborate its vestan origin. The historical and geographic relationship of the two masses and the comparable bulk mineralogy supported the pairing of these two meteorites. This makes the Serooskerke a valuable legacy of the 1925 fall, especially as the location of ~50% of the remaining Ellemeet mass is presently unknown.     

X‐shooting Herbig Ae/Be stars: Accretion probed by near‐infrared He I emission

The Herbig Ae/Be stars are intermediate mass pre‐main sequence stars that bridge the gap between the low mass T Tauri stars and the Massive Young Stellar Objects. In this mass range, the acting star forming mechanism switches from magnetically controlled accretion to an as yet unknown mechanism, but which is likely to be direct disk accretion onto the star. We observed a large sample of Herbig Ae/Be stars with X‐shooter to address this issue from a multi‐wavelength perspective. It is the largest such study to date, not only because of the number of objects involved, but also because of the large wavelength coverage from the blue to the near‐infrared. This allows many accretion diagnostics to be studied simultaneously. By correlating the various properties with mass, temperature and age, we aim to determine where and whether the magnetically controlled mass accretion mechanism halts and the proposed direct disk accretion takes over. Here, we will give an overview of the background, present some observations and discuss our initial results. We will introduce a new accretion diagnostic for the research of Herbig Ae/Be stars, the HeI 1.083 μm line (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

The Fresnel space imager as a disk evolution watcher

The Fresnel Diffractive Imaging Arrays form high resolution images by diffraction with low radiometric efficiencies. They are extremely good devices to make high resolution imaging and integral field spectroscopy of bright sources. Thirty meter arrays will provide a spatial resolution of 0.8 mas at Lyman-?? that will open a completely new field of research: the study of matter distribution around disks and their gravitational drives. In this contribution, the potentials of the 3.6 m precursors (or probes) for astrophysical disks and jets research, are described. Main emphasis is made on young planetary disks.     

便携式光电望远镜用于流星暴观测的探讨

本文介绍了便携式人卫光电望远镜的主要性能特点,探讨了将其应用于狮子座流星暴观测的可能性。     

Cosmic-ray positrons: are there primary sources?

Galactic cosmic rays consist of primary and secondary particles. Primary cosmic rays are thought to be energized by first order Fermi acceleration processes at supernova shock fronts within our Galaxy. The cosmic rays that eventually reach the Earth from this source are mainly protons and atomic nuclei, but also include electrons. Secondary cosmic rays are created in collisions of primary particles with the diffuse interstellar gas. They are relatively rare but carry important information on the Galactic propagation of the primary particles. The secondary component includes a small fraction of antimatter particles, positrons and antiprotons. In addition, positrons and antiprotons may also come from unusual sources and possibly provide insight into new physics. For instance, the annihilation of heavy supersymmetric dark matter particles within the Galactic halo could lead to positrons or antiprotons with distinctive energy signatures. With the High-Energy Antimatter Telescope (HEAT) balloon-borne instrument, we have measured the abundances of positrons and electrons at energies between 1 and 50 GeV. The data suggest that indeed a small additional antimatter component may be present that cannot be explained by a purely secondary production mechanism. Here we describe the signature of the effect and discuss its possible origin.     

A comparison of the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn: deep atmospheric composition, cloud structure, vertical mixing, and origin.

We present our current understanding of the composition, vertical mixing, cloud structure and the origin of the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. Available observations point to a much more vigorous vertical mixing in Saturn's middle-upper atmosphere than in Jupiter's. The nearly cloud-free nature of the Galileo probe entry site, a 5-micron hotspot, is consistent with the depletion of condensable volatiles to great depths, which is attributed to local meteorology. Somewhat similar depletion of water may be present in the 5-micron bright regions of Saturn also. The supersolar abundances of heavy elements, particularly C and S in Jupiter's atmosphere and C in Saturn's, as well as the progressive increase of C from Jupiter to Saturn and beyond, tend to support the icy planetesimal model of the formation of the giant planets and their atmospheres. However, much work remains to be done, especially in the area of laboratory studies, including identification of possible new microwave absorbers, and modelling, in order to resolve the controversy surrounding the large discrepancy between Jupiter's global ammonia abundance, hence the nitrogen elemental ratio, derived from the earth-based microwave observations and that inferred from the analysis of the Galileo probe-orbiter radio attenuation data for the hotspot. We look forward to the observations from Cassini-Huygens spacecraft which are expected to result not only in a rich harvest of information for Saturn, but a better understanding of the formation of the giant planets and their atmospheres when these data are combined with those that exist for Jupiter.     

A statistical study of gamma-ray burst afterglows measured by the Swift Ultraviolet Optical Telescope

We present the first statistical analysis of 27 Ultraviolet Optical Telescope (UVOT) optical/ultraviolet light curves of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows. We have found, through analysis of the light curves in the observer's frame, that a significant fraction rise in the first 500 s after the GRB trigger, all light curves decay after 500 s, typically as a power law with a relatively narrow distribution of decay indices, and the brightest optical afterglows tend to decay the quickest. We find that the rise could be either produced physically by the start of the forward shock, when the jet begins to plough into the external medium, or geometrically where an off-axis observer sees a rising light curve as an increasing amount of emission enters the observers line of sight, which occurs as the jet slows. We find that at 99.8 per cent confidence, there is a correlation, in the observed frame, between the apparent magnitude of the light curves at 400 s and the rate of decay after 500 s. However, in the rest frame, a Spearman rank test shows only a weak correlation of low statistical significance between luminosity and decay rate. A correlation should be expected if the afterglows were produced by off-axis jets, suggesting that the jet is viewed from within the half-opening angle θ or within a core of a uniform energy density  θ_c  . We also produced logarithmic luminosity distributions for three rest-frame epochs. We find no evidence for bimodality in any of the distributions. Finally, we compare our sample of UVOT light curves with the X-ray Telescope (XRT) light-curve canonical model. The range in decay indices seen in UVOT light curves at any epoch is most similar to the range in decay of the shallow decay segment of the XRT canonical model. However, in the XRT canonical model, there is no indication of the rising behaviour observed in the UVOT light curves.     

Using the minimum spanning tree to trace mass segregation

We present a new method to detect and quantify mass segregation in star clusters. It compares the minimum spanning tree (MST) of massive stars with that of random stars. If mass segregation is present, the MST length of the most massive stars will be shorter than that of random stars. This difference can be quantified (with an associated significance) to measure the degree of mass segregation. We test the method on simulated clusters in both 2D and 3D and show that the method works as expected.
We apply the method to the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) and show that the method is able to detect the mass segregation in the Trapezium with a 'mass segregation ratio (MSR)'  Λ_MSR= 8.0 ± 3.5  (where  Λ_MSR= 1  is no mass segregation) down to  16 M_⊙  , and also that the ONC is mass segregated at a lower level  (∼2.0 ± 0.5)  down to  5 M_⊙  . Below  5 M_⊙  we find no evidence for any further mass segregation in the ONC.