Subarcsec 10μm imaging of bipolar flow sources

We have started a program of high-resolution (0.4/pixel) 10m imaging of bipolar outflow sources using the 10m camera CAMIRAS. We present recent results obtained at the Canada France Hawaii Telescope which reveal extended emission or IR companions in several luminous objects. The extended emission we detected probably arises from transiently heated very small grains, while the newly discovered companions could contribute significantly to the outflow activity and extended far-IR emission usually attributed to the main optical source.     

Paleohydrology and paleochemistry of Lake Manitoba,Canada: the isotope and ostracode records

Lake Manitoba, the largest lake in the Prairie region of North America, contains a fine-grained sequence of late Pleistocene and Holocene sediment that documents a complex postglacial history. This record indicates that differential isostatic rebound and changing climate have interacted with varying drainage basin size and hydrologic budget to create significant variations in lake level and limnological conditions. During the initial depositional period in the basin, the Lake Agassiz phase (12–9 ka), ¹⁸O of ostracodes ranged from –16 to –5 (PDB), implying the lake was variously dominated by cold, dilute glacial meltwater and warm to cold, slightly saline water.Candona subtriangulata, which prefers cold, dilute water, dominates the most negative ¹⁸O intervals, when the basin was part of proglacial Lake Agassiz. At times during this early phase, the ¹⁸O of the lake abruptly shifted to higher values; euryhaline taxa such asC. rawsoni orLimnocythere ceriotuberosa, and halobiont taxa such asL. staplini orL. sappaensis are dominant in these intervals. This positive covariance of isotope and ostracode records implies that the lake level episodically fell, isolating the Lake Manitoba basin from the main glacial lake.¹⁸O values from inorganic endogenic Mg-calcite in the post-Agassiz phase of Lake Manitoba trend from –4 at 8 ka to –11 at 4.5 ka. We interpret that this trend indicates a gradually increasing influence of isotopically low (–20 SMOW) Paleozoic groundwater inflow, although periods of increased evaporation during this time may account for zones of less negative isotopic values. The ¹⁸O of this inorganic calcite abruptly shifts to higher values (–6) after 4.5 ka due to the combined effects of increased evaporative enrichment in a closed basin lake and the increased contribution of isotopically high surface water inflow on the hydrologic budget. After 2 ka, the ¹⁸O of the Mg-calcite fluctuates between –13 and –7, implying short-term variability in the lake's hydrologic budget, with values indicating the lake varied from outflow-dominated to evaporation-dominated. The ¹³C values of Mg-calcite remain nearly constant from 8 to 4.5 ka and then trend to higher values upward in the section. This pattern suggests primary productivity in the lake was initially constant but gradually increased after 4.5 ka.This is the sixth in a series of papers published in this issue on the paleolimnology of arid regions. These papers were presented at the Sixth International Palaeolimnology Symposium held 19–21 April, 1993 at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Dr A. R. Chivas served as guest editor for these papers.     

Ca X line ratios in solar flares

Theoretical Ca X electron temperature sensitive emission line ratios, derived using electron excitation rates interpolated from accurateR-matrix calculations, are presented forR ₁ =I(419.74 )/I(574.02 ,),R ₂ =I(411.65 )/I(574.02 ),R ₃ =I(419.74 )/I(557.75 ), andR ₄ =I(411.65 )/I(557.75 ). A comparison of these with observational data for three solar flares, obtained by the Naval Research Laboratory's S082A slitless spectrograph on boardSkylab, reveals good agreement between theory and observation forR ₁ andR ₃ in one event, which provides limited support for the accuracy of the atomic data adopted in the analysis. However, in the other flares the observed values ofR ₁ –R ₄ are much larger than the theoretical high-temperature limits, which is probably due to blending of the 419.74 line with Civ 419.71 , and 411.65 with possibly Ciii 411.70 .     

Fine structure in a metric type IV burst: Multi-site spectrographic,polarimetric, and heliographic observations

The spectral fine structure of solar radio continua is thought to reveal wave-particle and wave-wave interactions in magnetic traps in the solar corona. We present observations of spectra, polarization, and spatial characteristics of combined emission/extinction features (zebra patterns) during a decimetric/metric type IV event on 5 June, 1990. Very high modulation depths are observed. The size and location of the sources during emission and extinction are determined for the first time. Two remarkable features are found: (1) The sources of emission stripes have finite size, up to nearly 2; during extinction stripes the brightness is reduced across the whole extent of the unperturbed continuum, which is slightly larger than 2. (2) During emission stripes the sources drift over distances up to several × 10⁴ km, with apparent velocities up to 10⁵ km s^–1. The observed features are briefly discussed with respect to interpretations based on wave-particle interactions and on the scattering of electromagnetic waves.     

ISIS IR: The first infrared fibre-fed spectrograph

ISIS IR is the first attempt to use fibre optics for near infrared spectroscopy (1.8m). It is a field spectrograph (2D spectroscopy), and can work at various resolving powers (up to 25000). It can be transported anywhere, and soon it will be used at CFHT with one NICMOS 3-based camera.Département d'Astrophysique Extragalactique et de Cosmologie     

Theoretical emission line strengths for Ov compared to EUV solar observations

RecentR-matrix calculations of electron impact excitation rates in Ov are used to derive the emission line intensity ratios (in energy units) $$\begin{gathered} R_1 = I(2s2p^{ 3} P - 2p^{2 3} P)/I(2s^{2 1} S_0 - 2s2p^{ 1} P_1 ) = I(761.1\mathop A\limits^ \circ )/I(629.7\mathop A\limits^ \circ ), \hfill \\ R_2 = I(2s^{2 1} S_0 - 2s2p^{ 3} P_1 )/I(2s^{2 1} S_0 - 2s2p^{ 1} P_1 ) = I(1218.4\mathop A\limits^ \circ )/I(629.7\mathop A\limits^ \circ ), \hfill \\ \end{gathered} $$ and $$R_3 = I(2s2p^{ 1} P_1 - 2p^{2 1} S_0 )/I(2s^{2 1} S_0 - 2s2p^{ 1} P_1 ) = I(774.5\mathop A\limits^ \circ )/I(629.7\mathop A\limits^ \circ )$$ as a function of electron temperature (T _e) and density (N _e). These results are presented as plots ofR ₁ vsR ₂, andR ₁ vsR ₃, which should allowboth N _e andT _e to be deduced for the Ov line emitting region of a plasma. Electron densities derived from the (R ₁,R ₂) and (R ₁,R ₃) diagrams in conjunction with observational data for several solar features obtained with the Harvard S-055 spectrometer on boardSkylab are found to be compatible, and in good agreement with values ofN _e estimated from line ratios in species formed at similar electron temperatures to Ov. In addition, values ofT _e determined from (R ₁,R ₂) and (R ₁,R ₃) are generally close to that expected theoretically. These results provide experimental support for the accuracy of the diagnostic calculations presented in this paper, and hence the atomic data used in their derivation.     

Sub-arcsec 10 μm imaging of β pictoris and other star disk candidates

We have used the ESO 10 m camera, TIMMI, to image with a very high angular resolution (PFoV: 0.3; FWHM:0.9) several main-sequence star disk candidates. Information on the -Pictoris dust disk has been obtained in a region largely inaccessible to previous observations: 0–80 AU, with a resolution of about 5 AU after deconvolution. Another promising target for 10 m imaging, 51 Ophiuchi, appears point-like.based on data collected at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), La Silla, Chile     

On the sampling of airborne measurements of radiative properties of cloud fields: Results from International Cirrus Experiment (ICE), 1987

Summary During the first pilot phase of the International Cirrus Experiment (ICE) in September/October 1987 radiation measurements were carried out above and below broken cloud fields over the German Bight. Analyses of the measurements of 25.9.1987 (broken cumulus cloud field) showed an unexpected high absorption of solar radiation but not those of 28.9.1987 (stratocumulus/stratus cloud field). This might be explained by a partial negligence of cloud side factor under the viewing geometry of the pyranometer and other reasons. The light guide effect (leakage) within holes can account for the depletion of cloud reflectance and the enhancement of cloud transmittance at large cloud cover, as observed during the measurements on 28.9.1987. The fluctuation of the irradiances, which can be characterized by the intermittency parameter, has been related to the corresponding cloud cover by a regression equation. On the condition of similarity, this scaling parameter derived from sample measurements could be extrapolated to that of the whole cloud field. Thus, the estimation of the irradiance spectrum for the whole cloud field may be possible, from samples taken with aircraft and imaging data.With 5 Figures     

Correlation methods in fingerprint detection studies

This investigation addresses two general issues regarding the role of pattern similarity statistics in greenhouse warming detection studies: normalization, and the relative merits of centered versus uncentered statistics. A pattern correlation statistic is used to search for the greenhouse warming signals predicted by five different models in the observed records of land and ocean surface temperature changes. Two forms of this statistic were computed: R (t), which makes use of nonnormalized data, and (t), which employs point-wise normalized data in order to focus the search on regions where the signal-to-noise ratio is large. While there are no trends in the R (t) time series, the time series of (t) show large positive trends. However, it is not possible to infer from the (t) results that the observed pattern of temperature change is, in fact, becoming increasingly similar to the model-predicted signal. This is because point-wise normalization of the observed and simulated mean change fields by a single common field introduces a common factor effect, which means that the quantities being compared should show some similarity a priori. This does not necessarily make normalization inapplicable, because the detection test involves seeking a trend in the similarity statistic. We show, however, that trends in (t) must arise almost completely from the observed data, and cannot be an indicator of increasing observed data/signal similarity. We also compare the information provided by centered statistics such as R(t) and the uncentered C(t) statistic introduced by Barnett. We show that C(t) may be expressed as the weighted sum of two terms, one proportional to R(t) and the other proportional to the observed spatial mean. For near-surface temperatures, the spatial average term dominates over the R(t) term. In this case the use of C(t) is equivalent to the use of spatial-mean temperature. We conclude that at present, the most informative pattern correlation statistic for detection purposes is R(t), the standard product-moment correlation coefficient between the observed and model fields. Our failure to find meaningful trends in R(t) may be due to the fact that the signal is being obscured by the background noise of natural variability, and/or because of incorrect model signals or sensitivities.