Precise laboratory wavelengths of the Mg I and Mg II resonance transitions at 2853, 2803 and 2796 Å

Strong ultraviolet resonance transitions are observed routinely both in the Galactic interstellar medium and in quasar absorption systems. The quality of the astronomical spectroscopic data now available demands more precise laboratory rest wavelengths. Of particular interest is the accuracy with which one can constrain space–time variations in fundamental constants using quasar spectra. A recent analysis by Webb et al. of 25 quasar spectra using Mg and Fe transitions tentatively suggests that the fine-structure constant was smaller at earlier epochs. To permit a check on this result, and to allow further more extensive investigations, we have carried out a new determination of the laboratory wavelengths of Mg  i  2853 Å, Mg  II  2796 Å and Mg  II  2803 Å by high-resolution Fourier transform spectroscopy. Our results for Mg  II  2796 Å are consistent with the value measured independently by two other groups. To our knowledge, no previous measurements of comparable precision exist for Mg  I  2853 Å and Mg  II  2803 Å.     

Simulations of spheroidal systems with substructure: trees in fields

We present a hybrid technique of N -body simulation to deal with collisionless stellar systems having an inhomogeneous global structure. We combine a treecode and a self-consistent field code such that each of the codes models a different component of the system being investigated. The treecode is suited to treatment of dynamically cold or clumpy components, which may undergo significant evolution within a dynamically hot system. The hot system is appropriately evolved by the self-consistent field code. This combined code is particularly suited to a number of problems in galactic dynamics. Applications of the code to these problems are briefly discussed.     

Numerical analysis of the symmetric methods

Aimed at the initial value problem of the particular second-order ordinary differential equations,y =f(x, y), the symmetric methods (Quinlan and Tremaine, 1990) and our methods (Xu and Zhang, 1994) have been compared in detail by integrating the artificial earth satellite orbits in this paper. In the end, we point out clearly that the integral accuracy of numerical integration of the satellite orbits by applying our methods is obviously higher than that by applying the same order formula of the symmetric methods when the integration time-interval is not greater than 12000 periods.     

Astrophysical applications of a boundary integral method for fluid dynamics

A boundary integral formulation for the dynamics of incompressible, inviscid, self-gravitating bodies is described. The method is applied to several problems of astrophysical interest: spheroidal equilibria (Maclaurin and Jeans), oscillations, and a simple version of tidal encounter and breakup.     

Analysis of Land Water Storage in Southwest China Based on GRACE Data

The inversion of the variation in the land water storage in Southwest China is carried out by taking advantage of the data obtained by the earth gravity satellite GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) for 64 months from January 2005 to April 2010. The result shows that by selecting an appropriate Gauss radius (R = 600 km) and taking the average gravitational field of the adopted data as the back-ground gravitational field, the land water storage in Southwest China inverted on the basis of the GRACE data reflects the drought in Southwest China at the beginning of 2010 very well.     

The Bootstrap Estimation of the Accuracy of Preliminary Orbit Determination

From the point of view of the non-parametric statistics, a general estimation method of the accuracy and con?dence interval of preliminary orbit determination is proposed for the occasion without any other information but observational data. Based on the bootstrap method, the estimation relies only on the observational data and does not require the precise orbit determination as a reference, or the assumption of normal distribution of observational errors. Numerical experiments show that this method is very simple in implementa- tion, and may serve as an easy accuracy evaluation for the preliminary orbit determination and for the follow-up employments.     

Realistic simulations of stellar surface convection with ANTARES: I. Boundary conditions and model relaxation

We have implemented open boundary conditions into the ANTARES code to increase the realism of our simulations of stellar surface convection. Even though we greatly benefit from the high accuracy of our fifth order numerical scheme (WENO5) the broader stencils needed for the numerical scheme complicate the implementation of boundary conditions. We show that the effective temperature of a numerical simulation cannot be changed by corrections at the lower boundary since the thermal stratification does only change on the Kelvin–Helmholtz time scale. Except for very shallow models this time scale cannot be covered by multidimensional simulations due to the enormous computational requirements. We demonstrate to what extent numerical simulations of stellar surface convection are sensitive to the initial conditions and the boundary conditions. An ill-conceived choice of parameters for the boundary conditions can have a severe impact. Numerical simulations of stellar surface convection will only be (physically) meaningful and realistic if the initial model, the extent and position of the simulation box and the parameters from the boundary conditions are chosen adequately.