Operator-oriented CRS interpolation

In common‐reflection‐surface imaging the reflection arrival time field is parameterized by operators that are of higher dimension or order than in conventional methods. Using the common‐reflection‐surface approach locally in the unmigrated prestack data domain opens a potential for trace regularization and interpolation. In most data interpolation methods based on local coherency estimation, a single operator is designed for a target sample and the output amplitude is defined as a weighted average along the operator. This approach may fail in presence of interfering events or strong amplitude and phase variations. In this paper we introduce an alternative scheme in which there is no need for an operator to be defined at the target sample itself. Instead, the amplitude at a target sample is constructed from multiple operators estimated at different positions. In this case one operator may contribute to the construction of several target samples. Vice versa, a target sample might receive contributions from different operators. Operators are determined on a grid which can be sparser than the output grid. This allows to dramatically decrease the computational costs. In addition, the use of multiple operators for a single target sample stabilizes the interpolation results and implicitly allows several contributions in case of interfering events. Due to the considerable computational expense, common‐reflection‐surface interpolation is limited to work in subsets of the prestack data. We present the general workflow of a common‐reflection‐surface‐based regularization/interpolation for 3D data volumes. This workflow has been applied to an OBC common‐receiver volume and binned common‐offset subsets of a 3D marine data set. The impact of a common‐reflection‐surface regularization is demonstrated by means of a subsequent time migration. In comparison to the time migrations of the original and DMO‐interpolated data, the results show particular improvements in view of the continuity of reflections events. This gain is confirmed by an automatic picking of a horizon in the stacked time migrations.     

WSO-UV progress and expectations

The World Space Observatory Ultraviolet (WSO-UV) is the space mission that will grant access to the ultraviolet (UV) range in the post Hubble epoch. WSO-UV is equipped with instrumentation for imaging and spectroscopy and it is fully devoted to UV astronomy. In this article, we outline the WSO-UV mission model and present the current status of the project.     

Is the additional increase of star luminosity due to partial mixing real?

The partial mixing of matter between the radiative envelope and convective core in an early Btype star produces an additional increase of star luminosity during main sequence evolution. High quality data on stellar mass and luminosity defined from studies of detached double-lined eclipsing binaries are used to check the existence of such additional increase. It is shown that the additional luminosity increase does not contradict observed high quality data, if the intensity of partial mixing is restricted by the observed increase in surface helium content.     

Strengthening long-term embankments maintained on permafrost soils

An analysis of the reasons for the displacements of long-term embankments maintained on permafrost soils indicates that they mainly occur due to plastic deformations in the layer of seasonal freezing and thawing; therefore, the reconstruction of permafrost is not effective in this case. It is proposed to strengthen these embankments with the help of using jet technology for cementation of the top layer of the roadbed. This approach is considered through the example of the deforming embankment on 6,278 km of the Turinskaya-Karymskaya section of the Trans-Siberian Railway.     

Poststack diffraction imaging using reverse‐time migration

We propose a method for imaging small‐scale diffraction objects in complex environments in which Kirchhoff‐based approaches may fail. The proposed method is based on a separation between the specular reflection and diffraction components of the total wavefield in the migrated surface angle domain. Reverse‐time migration was utilized to produce the common image gathers. This approach provides stable and robust results in cases of complex velocity models. The separation is based on the fact that, in surface angle common image gathers, reflection events are focused at positions that correspond to the apparent dip angle of the reflectors, whereas diffracted events are distributed over a wide range of angles. The high‐resolution radon‐based procedure is used to efficiently separate the reflection and diffraction wavefields. In this study, we consider poststack diffraction imaging. The advantages of working in the poststack domain are its numerical efficiency and the reduced computational time. The numerical results show that the proposed method is able to image diffraction objects in complex environments. The application of the method to a real seismic dataset illustrates the capability of the approach to extract diffractions.     

Linear kinetic theory of instabilities of a gravitatingstellar disk

Linear kinetic theory is developed to describe collective oscillations (and their instabilities) propagating in a rapidly rotating disk of stars, representing a highly flattened galaxy. The analysis is carried out for the special case of a self-gravitating, infinitesimally thin, and spatially inhomogeneous system, taking into account the effects both of thermal movements of stars and of gravitational encounters between stars and giant molecular clouds of an interstellar medium. The star–cloud encounters are described with the use of the Landau collision integral. The dynamics of gravity perturbations with rare interparticle encounters is considered. Such a disk is treated by employing the well elaborated mathematical formalisms from plasma perturbation theory using normal-mode analysis. In particular, the method of solving the Boltzmann equation is applied by integration along paths, neglecting the influence of star–cloud encounters on the distribution of stars in the zeroth-order approximation. We are especially interested in important kinetic effects due to wave–star resonances, which we have little knowledge about. The kinetic effects are introduced via a minor drift motion of stars which is computed from the equations of stellar motion in an unperturbed central force field of a galaxy. The dispersion laws for two main branches of disk's oscillations, that is the classical Jeans branch and an additional gradient branch, are deduced. The resonant Landau-type instabilities of hydrodynamically stable Jeans and gradient gravity perturbations is considered to be a long-term generating mechanism for propagating density waves, thereby leading to spiral-like and/or ring-like patterns in the flat galaxies. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Massive identification of asteroids in three-body resonances

An essential role in the asteroidal dynamics is played by the mean motion resonances. Two-body planet–asteroid resonances are widely known, due to the Kirkwood gaps. Besides, so-called three-body mean motion resonances exist, in which an asteroid and two planets participate. Identification of asteroids in three-body (namely, Jupiter–Saturn–asteroid) resonances was initially accomplished by Nesvorný and Morbidelli (Nesvorný D., Morbidelli, A. [1998]. Astron. J. 116, 3029–3037), who, by means of visual analysis of the time behaviour of resonant arguments, found 255 asteroids to reside in such resonances. We develop specialized algorithms and software for massive automatic identification of asteroids in the three-body, as well as two-body, resonances of arbitrary order, by means of automatic analysis of the time behaviour of resonant arguments. In the computation of orbits, all essential perturbations are taken into account. We integrate the asteroidal orbits on the time interval of 100,000 yr and identify main-belt asteroids in the three-body Jupiter–Saturn–asteroid resonances up to the 6th order inclusive, and in the two-body Jupiter–asteroid resonances up to the 9th order inclusive, in the set of ～250,000 objects from the “Asteroids – Dynamic Site” (AstDyS) database. The percentages of resonant objects, including extrapolations for higher-order resonances, are determined. In particular, the observed fraction of pure-resonant asteroids (those exhibiting resonant libration on the whole interval of integration) in the three-body resonances up to the 6th order inclusive is ≈0.9% of the whole set; and, using a higher-order extrapolation, the actual total fraction of pure-resonant asteroids in the three-body resonances of all orders is estimated as ≈1.1% of the whole set.     

An optical-UV survey of the North Celestial Cap

We present preliminary results of an optical-UV survey of the North Celestial Cap (NCCS) based on ∼5% areal coverage. The NCCS will provide good photometric and astrometric data for the North Celestial Cap region (80°≤δ≤90°). This region, at galactic latitudes from 17°≲b≲37°, is poorly covered by modern CCD-based surveys. The expected number of detected objects in NCCS is ∼1,500,000. We discuss issues of galactic structure, extinction, and the galaxy clustering in the colour-colour diagrams.