Evaluating the Uncertainties in the Electron Temperature and Radial Speed Measurements Using White Light Corona Eclipse Observations

We examine the uncertainties in two plasma parameters from their true values in a simulated asymmetric corona. We use the Corona Heliosphere (CORHEL) and Magnetohydrodynamics Around the Sphere (MAS) models in the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) to investigate the differences between an assumed symmetric corona and a more realistic, asymmetric one. We were able to predict the electron temperatures and electron bulk flow speeds to within ±?0.5 MK and ±?100 km?s^?1, respectively, over coronal heights up to 5.0 R_⊙ from Sun center. We believe that this technique could be incorporated in next-generation white-light coronagraphs to determine these electron plasma parameters in the low solar corona. We have conducted experiments in the past during total solar eclipses to measure the thermal electron temperature and the electron bulk flow speed in the radial direction in the low solar corona. These measurements were made at different altitudes and latitudes in the low solar corona by measuring the shape of the K-coronal spectra between 350 nm and 450 nm and two brightness ratios through filters centered at 385.0 nm/410.0 nm and 398.7 nm/423.3 nm with a bandwidth of ≈?4 nm. Based on symmetric coronal models used for these measurements, the two measured plasma parameters were expected to represent those values at the points where the lines of sight intersected the plane of the solar limb.     

Uninhabited habitats on Mars

Investigations of Mars as a potential location for life often make the assumption that where there are habitats, they will contain organisms. However, the observation of the ubiquitous distribution of life in habitable environments on the Earth does not imply the presence of life in martian habitats. Although uninhabited habitats are extremely rare on the Earth, a lack of a productive photosynthetic biosphere on Mars to generate organic carbon and oxygen, thus providing a rapidly available redox couple for energy acquisition by life and/or a lack of connectivity between habitats potentially increases the scope and abundance of uninhabited habitats for much of the geological history of the planet. Uninhabited habitats could have existed on Mars from the Noachian to the present-day in impact hydrothermal systems, megaflood systems, lacustrine environments, transient melted permafrost, gullies and local regions of volcanic activity; and there may be evidence for them in martian meteorites. Uninhabited habitats would provide control habitats to investigate the role of biology in planetary-scale geochemical processes on the Earth and they would provide new constraints on the habitability of Mars. Future robotic craft and samples returned from Mars will be able to directly show if uninhabited habitats exist or existed on Mars.     

International Heliophysical Year 2007: A Report from the UN/NASA Workshop Bangalore, India, 27 November–1 December 2006

The IHY Secretariat and the United Nations Basic Space Science Initiative (UNBSSI) assist scientists and engineers from all over the world in participating in the International Heliophysical Year (IHY) 2007. A major thrust of IHY/UNBSSI is to deploy arrays of small, inexpensive instruments such as magnetometers, radio telescopes, GPS receivers, all-sky cameras, etc. around the world to allow global measurements of ionospheric and heliospheric phenomena. The small instrument programme is envisioned as a partnership between instrument providers and instrument hosts in developing nations. The IHY/UNBSSI can facilitate the deployment of several of these networks world-wide. Existing data bases and relevant software tools will be identified to promote space science activities in developing nations. Extensive data on space science have been accumulated by a number of space missions. Similarly, long-term data bases are available from ground-based observations. These data can be utilized in ways different from originally intended for understanding the heliophysical processes. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of IHY/UNBSSI, its achievements, future plans, and outreach to the 192 Member States of the United Nations as recorded in the UN/NASA workshop in India.     

DETECTION OF HIGH-PRESSURE SILICA POLYMORPHS IN WHOLE-ROCK SAMPLES FROM A METEOR CRATER,ARIZONA, IMPACT SAMPLE USING SOLID-STATE SILICON-29 NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE SPECTROSCOPY

High-resolution solid-state silicon-29 nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy using “magic-angle” sample-spinning can readily detect the presence of the high pressure silica polymorphs coesite and stishovite in whole-rock samples from a Meteor Crater, Arizona, impact sample, and yields accurate coesite/stishovite ratios. Such determinations are being carried out by partially suppressing (saturating) intense quartz signals (which have long spin-lattice relaxation times) by means of short experimental recycle-times. This method enhances the signal-to-noise ratios of coesite and stishovite (which have relatively short spin-lattice relaxation times). For the sample examined, the coesite/stishovite ratio is about 27.     

Forces and ionic transport between mica surfaces: implications for pressure solution

Using a surface forces apparatus (SFA), we have studied the interactions between mica surfaces in pure and mixed NaCl and CaCl₂ solutions at relevant geological conditions of pressure and electrolyte composition. Our results show that the short-range (0-50 Å) colloidal forces, including attractive van der Waals and ion-correlation forces, repulsive electrostatic forces, and oscillatory or monotonically repulsive hydration (surface-induced water structure-dependent) forces are involved in different stages of pressure solution. These forces depend on the type (Na⁺, Ca²⁺, and H⁺) and concentration (6-600 mM) of the cations present in the solution. Equilibrium water film thicknesses were measured as a function of the applied (normal) pressure up to 50 MPa (500 atm) and ranged from 30 to 0 Å at pressures above 10 MPa (100 atm). Measurements were also made of the rates of diffusion and exchange of ions into and out of such ultrathin films, and on the nucleation and growth of ionic crystallites on and between the surfaces, which occurred only in the presence of calcium ions. Diffusion of ions into and out of structured water films as thin as one to five water molecules (3 to 15 Å) were found to be surprisingly rapid and never less than two orders of magnitude below the diffusion in bulk water. In contrast, the rates of binding and exchange of ions to the surfaces were found to be the rate-limiting steps to adsorption and crystal formation. These findings imply that, for certain systems or conditions, pressure solution rates could be limited by surface reactions rather than by ion diffusion in thin fluid films.     

Co-seismic landslide detection after M 7.4 earthquake on June 23, 2020, in Oaxaca,Mexico, based on rapid mapping method using high and medium resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images

Landslides are the fourth most common natural disasters in the world, with Costa Rica and southern Mexico being the most affected regions of Central America (Froude and Petley, 2018). In this work, we propose a semi-automated method to detect earthquake-triggered landslides for rapid mapping after a disaster event using open Sentinel-1 data. We used high-resolution TerraSAR-X data and very high-resolution Spot-7 images to compare and evaluate the accuracy of landslide distribution maps generated from the semi-automated method, applied to the M 7.1 earthquake on June 23, 2017, in Oaxaca, Mexico. The outcomes showed better accuracy in descending orbits due to ‘windward-leeward’ physiographic conditions, with a 50.56% quality percentage. This shows a reasonably good capacity to detect co-seismic landslides. However, the breaching factor was also high because several features, such as bare soils and agricultural areas, were incorrectly identified as co-seismic landslides. Finally, this semi-automated method establishes a basis for future improvements in methodologies applied to construct rapid mapping inventories using medium SAR scales.

     

Subsurface formation of oxidants on Mars and implications for the preservation of organic biosignatures

Hydrogen peroxide can form through the interaction of pyrite and anoxic water. The oxidation of pyrite results in the precipitation of sulfates and iron oxides, high redox potentials (~ 1000 mV) and acidic pH (3–4). The oxidative potential of the resultant solution may be responsible for the oxidation of organic compounds, as observed in the subsurface of the Rio Tinto Mars analog. On Mars subsurface migration of groundwater interacting with volcanogenic massive pyrite deposits would have mobilized acidic and oxidizing fluids through large portions of the crust, resulting in the widespread deposition of sulfates and iron oxides. This groundwater could have leached substantial volumes of aquifer material and crustal rocks, thereby erasing any organic compounds possibly down to depths of hundreds of meters. Therefore, the preservation of organic biosignatures must have been severely constrained in the portions of the ancient Martian crust that were exposed to aqueous processes, calling for a redefinition of the future targets in the search for biomolecular traces of life on Mars.     

STEREO SECCHI COR1-A/B Intercalibration at 180° Separation

The twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft reached a separation angle of 180° on 6 February 2011. This provided a unique opportunity to test the intercalibration between the Sun–Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) telescopes on both spacecraft for areas above the limb. So long as the corona is optically thin, at 180° separation each spacecraft sees the same corona from opposite directions. Thus, the data should appear as mirror images of each other. We report here on the results of the comparison of the images taken by the inner coronagraph (COR1) on the STEREO-Ahead and -Behind spacecraft in the hours when the separation was close to 180°. We find that the intensity values seen by the two telescopes agree with each other to a high degree of accuracy. This validates both the radiometric intercalibration between the COR1 telescopes, and the method used to remove instrumental background from the images. The relative error between COR1-A and COR1-B is found to be less than 10⁻⁹ B/B _⊙ over most of the field-of-view, growing to a few ×10⁻⁹ B/B _⊙ for the brighter pixels near the edge of the occulter. The primary source of error is the background determination. We also report on the analysis of star observations which show that the absolute radiometric calibration of either COR1 telescope has not changed significantly since launch.     

Background Subtraction for the SECCHI/COR1 Telescope Aboard STEREO

COR1 is an internally occulted Lyot coronagraph, part of the Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) instrument suite aboard the twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. Because the front objective lens is subjected to a full solar flux, the images are dominated by instrumental scattered light which has to be removed to uncover the underlying K corona data. We describe a procedure for removing the instrumental background from COR1 images. F coronal emission is subtracted at the same time. The resulting images are compared with simultaneous data from the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory Mk4 coronagraph. We find that the background subtraction technique is successful in coronal streamers, while the baseline emission in coronal holes (i.e. between plumes) is suppressed. This is an expected behavior of the background subtraction technique. The COR1 radiometric calibration is found to be either 10 – 15% lower, or 5 – 10% higher than that of the Mk4, depending on what value is used for the Mk4 plate scale, while an earlier study found the COR1 radiometric response to be ∼ 20% higher than that of the Large Angle Spectroscopic Coronagraph (LASCO) C2 telescope. Thus, the COR1 calibration is solidly within the range of other operating coronagraphs. The background levels in both COR1 telescopes have been quite steady in time, with the exception of a single contamination event on 30 January 2009. Barring too many additional events of this kind, there is every reason to believe that both COR1 telescopes will maintain usable levels of scattered light for the remainder of the STEREO mission.