Gulmarg,Kashmir, India: Potential Site for Optical Astronomical Observations

The site characteristics of Gulmarg, Kashmir at an altitude of about 2743.2 m above sea level is based on analysis of meteorological conditions, cloud cover, temperature, wind speed, wind direction, relative humidity and atmospheric pressure, etc. Analysis and characterization of meteorological conditions suggest that Gulmarg, Kashmir is a potential site for carrying out photometric as well as spectroscopic observations of celestial objects.     

Planning and Scheduling of Payloads of AstroSat During Initial and Normal Phase Observations

On 28th September 2015, India launched its first astronomical space observatory AstroSat, successfully. AstroSat carried five astronomy payloads, namely, (i) Cadmium Zinc Telluride Imager (CZTI), (ii) Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC), (iii) Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT), (iv) Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) and (v) Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM) and therefore, has the capability to observe celestial objects in multi-wavelength. Four of the payloads are co-aligned along the positive roll axis of the spacecraft and the remaining one is placed along the positive yaw axis direction. All the payloads are sensitive to bright objects and specifically, require avoiding bright Sun within a safe zone of their bore axes in orbit. Further, there are other operational constraints both from spacecraft side and payloads side which are to be strictly enforced during operations. Even on-orbit spacecraft manoeuvres are constrained to about two of the axes in order to avoid bright Sun within this safe zone and a special constrained manoeuvre is exercised during manoeuvres. The planning and scheduling of the payloads during the Performance Verification (PV) phase was carried out in semi-autonomous/manual mode and a complete automation is exercised for normal phase/Guaranteed Time Observation (GuTO) operations. The process is found to be labour intensive and several operational software tools, encompassing spacecraft sub-systems, on-orbit, domain and environmental constraints, were built-in and interacted with the scheduling tool for appropriate decision-making and science scheduling. The procedural details of the complex scheduling of a multi-wavelength astronomy space observatory and their working in PV phase and in normal/GuTO phases are presented in this paper.     

Revisiting Field Burial by Accretion onto Neutron Stars

The surface magnetic field strength of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) is found to be about 4 orders of magnitude lower than that of garden variety radio pulsars (with a spin of \({\sim }\)0.5–5 s and \(B{\sim }10^{12}\hbox { G}\)). The exact mechanism of the apparent reduction of field strength in MSPs is still a subject of debate. One of the proposed mechanisms is burial of the surface magnetic field under matter accreted from a companion. In this article we review the recent work on magnetic confinement of accreted matter on neutron stars poles. We present the solutions of the magneto-static equations with a more accurate equation of state of the magnetically confined plasma and discuss its implications for the field burial mechanism.     

The time-dependentX- andY-functions

The basic families of three-dimensional periodic orbits of the general three-body problem are determined numerically in order to obtain a global view of the simpler patterns of periodic three-body motion in three dimensions. The stability of the orbits is also computed. It is found that most of the orbits are unstable but stability intervals do exist for some of the families.     

Time-dependent scattering and transmission function in an anisotropic two-layered atmosphere

In this paper we consider the time-dependent diffuse reflection and transmission problems for a homogeneous anisotropically-scattering atmosphere of finite optical depth and solve it by the principle of invariance. Also we consider the time-dependent diffuse reflection and transmission of parallel rays by a slab consisting of two anisotropic homogeneous layers, whose scattering and transmission properties are known. It is shown how to express the time-dependent reflected and transmitted intensities in terms of their components. In a manner similar to that given by Tsujita (1968), we assumed that the upward-directed intensities of radiation at the boundary of the two layers are expressed by the sum of products of some auxiliary functions depending on only one argument. Then, after some analytical manipulations, three groups of systems of simultaneous integral equations governing the auxiliary functions are obtained.     

Solution of the equation of transfer for coherent scattering in an exponential atmosphere by the method of discrete ordinates

A solution of the transfer equation for coherent scattering in stellar atmosphere with Planck's function as a nonlinear function of optical depth, viz., $$B_v (T) = b_0 + b_1 {\text{ }}e^{ - \beta \tau } $$ is obtained by the method of discrete ordinates originally due to Chandrasekhar.     

Effect of solar pressure on the motion and stability of the system of two inter-connected satellites in an elliptical orbit

The effect of solar pressure on the two-dimensional motion of two cable-connected satellites in the Earth's central gravitational field of force for the elliptical orbit of the centre-of-mass of the system has been analysed. The equations of motion obtianed are nonlinear and non-autonomous.It is concluded with the aid of non-resonant solution that the system experiences resonance main as well as parametric. If the eccentricity is small, the system will always oscillate about the position of equilibrium with tight string like dumb-bell satellite with changing phase and constant amplitude.     

Revisiting Noether gauge symmetry for F(R) theory of gravity

Noether gauge symmetry for F(R) theory of gravity has been explored recently. The fallacy is that, even after setting gauge to vanish, the form of F(R)∝R ⁿ (where n≠1 is arbitrary) obtained in the process, has been claimed to be an outcome of gauge Noether symmetry. On the contrary, earlier works proved that any nonlinear form other than $F(R) \propto R^{\frac{3}{2}}$ is obscure. Here, we show that, setting gauge term zero, Noether equations are satisfied only for n=2, which again does not satisfy the field equations. Thus, as noticed earlier, the only form that Noether symmetry admits is $F(R) \propto R^{\frac{3}{2}}$ . Noether symmetry with non-zero gauge has also been studied explicitly here, to show that it does not produce anything new.     

Compression of intensity interferometry signals

Correlations between photon currents from separate light-collectors provide information on the shape of the source. When the light-collectors are well separated, for example in space, transmission of these currents to a central correlator is limited by band-width. We study the possibility of compression of the photon fluxes and find that traditional compression methods have a similar chance of achieving this goal compared to compressed sensing.