Prospects for astrometry with the Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), a large optical telescope having an aperture of 2.4 meters and a length of 8.8 meters, is being developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This telescope will be placed into earth orbit by the space shuttle. Astrometric observations with the HST are made using a Fine Guidance Sensor which is capable of measuring the position of one object relative to another with an accuracy of ±0.002 arcseconds. The astrometric user of HST will be provided with an Astrometric Data Reduction Software package (ADRS). The variety of astrometric problems to be investigated with HST is discussed.     

Modes to replace transitional asymptotic ray fields in a vertically inhomogeneous earth model

Summary. Asymptotic ray theory (ART) fails in transition regions near critically reflected, bottom glancing or caustic-forming rays in a vertically inhomogeneous layered earth. These deficiencies are repaired here by replacing the transitional ray fields with guided modes plus truncation remainders. Exact ray-mode equivalences and their high-frequency asymptotic approximations are formulated, and their validity and efficiency are verified by numerical comparisons for SH motion in a two-layer earth model comprised of an inhomogeneous sediment above an homogeneous semi-infinite bedrock.     

Self-similar solutions for the blast wave problem in radiative gasdynamics,I

Similarity solutions, describing the flow of a perfect gas behind spherical shock waves, are investigated including the radiation heat flux. The shock is assumed to be propagating in a medium at rest. Shock radius varies exponentially with time and density is inversely proportional to fifth power of the shock radius immediately ahead of the shock front.     

Going underground: in search of Carboniferous coal forests

The development of coal forests during the Carboniferous is one of the best-known episodes in the history of life. Although often reconstructed as steamy tropical rainforests, these ancient ecosystems were a far cry from anything we might encounter in the Amazon today. Bizarre giant club-mosses, horsetails and tree ferns were the dominant plants, not flowering trees as in modern rainforests. At their height, coal forests stretched all the way from Kansas to Kazakhstan, spanning the entire breadth of tropical Pangaea. Most of what we know of their biodiversity and ecology has been quite literally mined out of the ground through two centuries of hard labour. Without coal mining, our knowledge would be greatly impoverished. Over the past few years, we've been exploring underground coal mines in the United States, where entire forested landscapes have been preserved intact over huge areas. Never before have geologists had the opportunity to walk out through mile upon mile of fossilized forest. In this feature article, we describe some of our recent explorations and attempt to shed new light on these old fossils.     

Dust supply from river floodplains: the case of the lower Huang He (Yellow River) recorded in a loess–palaeosol sequence from the Mangshan Plateau

The Mangshan Plateau is located on the south bank of the Huang He (Yellow River) just west of the city of Zhengzhou, well outside the Loess Plateau in central China. Mixing models of the grain‐size data indicate that the loess deposits are mixtures of three loess components. Comparison of the mixing model with existing models established for a series of loess–palaeosol sequences from the Loess Plateau indicates that the Mangshan loess has been supplied from a proximal dust source, the Huang He floodplain, during major dust outbreaks. The high accumulation rates, the composition of the loess components, and especially the high proportions of a sandy loess component support this. Owing to the exceptionally high accumulation rates, the Mangshan grain size, magnetic susceptibility and carbonate records provide a high‐resolution archive of environmental and climate change. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cytoplasmic regionalization in starfish oocyte occurrence and localization of cytoplasmic determinants responsible for the formation of archenteron and primary mesenchyme in starfish (asterias amurensis) oocytes

Starfish oocytes with intact germinal vesicles (GVs) were cut along desired planes with glass needles or ligated using silk thread loops into two parts and allowed to mature in vitro, and inseminated. The experimental results showed that (1) only the parts with GVs or partial GV contents (PGVCs) cleaved, those without any GV materials did not; but nucleated and non-nucleated fragments cut from mature eggs were able to divide; (2) the development of animal parts of oocytes containing GVs or PGVCs was like that of animal fragments of matured oocytes with female pronuclei; most of them gave rise to permanent blastulae, and just a few formed ectodermal vesicles with a little primary mesenchyme; (3) a large part of vegetal fragments with GVs or PGVCs, and the vegetal parts of mature eggs without female pronuclei developed into small but normal embryos; (4) the fragments containing GVs or PGVCs obtained from the oocytes along a plane parallel to the animal-vegetal (A-V) axis developed as normally as the halves (with or without female pronuclei) severed from mature eggs along the same axis. Based on the data above, it was concluded that (1) the non-chromatin materials in the oocyte GVs are indispensable for successful fertilization and cleavage of starfish eggs; (2) some factor (s) located asymmetrically in the vegetal hemispheres of starfish oocytes is (are) responsible for formation of the archenteron and primary mesenchyme. It is evident from the above findings that the oocyte cytoplasm of the starfish had already regionalized before the GV break-down. Contribution No. 1722 from the Institute of Oceanology, Academia Sinica     

Physical parameters of near-Earth asteroid 1982 DV

Visual and infrared observations were made of Amor asteroid 1982 DV during its discovery apparition. Broadband visual and near-infrared photometry shows that it is an S-class asteroid. Narrowband spectrophotometry shows an absorption feature due to olivine or pyroxene or both centered at 0.93 μm. Applying a nonrotating thermal model to 10-μm photometry, the geometric albedo is calculated to be approximately 0.27. The geometric albedo for a slowly rotating, rocky surface was calculated for 1 night to be 0.15, consistent with S-class asteroid albedos. Thus, 1982 DV is either one of the most reflective S-class asteroids known, or a significant amount of bare rock is exposed on the asteroid's surface. For the nonrotating model, ellipsoidal dimensions for 1982 DV are 3.5 × 1.4 × 1.4 km.