Will point sources spoil 21-cm tomography?

21-cm tomography is emerging as a promising probe of the cosmological dark ages and the epoch of reionization, as well as a tool for observational cosmology in general. However, serious sources of foreground contamination must be subtracted for experimental efforts to be viable. In this paper, we focus on the removal of unresolved extragalactic point sources with smooth spectra, and evaluate how the residual foreground contamination after cleaning depends on instrumental and algorithmic parameters. A crucial but often ignored complication is that the synthesized beam of an interferometer array shrinks towards higher frequency, causing complicated frequency structure in each sky pixel as 'frizz' far from the beam centre contracts across unresolved radio sources. We find that current-generation experiments should none the less be able to clean out this point source contamination adequately, and quantify the instrumental and algorithmic design specifications required to meet this foreground challenge.     

A merger tree with microsolar mass resolution: application to γ-ray emission from subhalo population

Observations of the southern Cepheid ℓ Car to yield the mean angular diameter and angular pulsation amplitude have been made with the Sydney University Stellar Interferometer at a wavelength of 696 nm. The resulting mean limb-darkened angular diameter is 2.990 ± 0.017 mas (i.e. ± 0.6 per cent) with a maximum-to-minimum amplitude of 0.560 ± 0.018 mas corresponding to 18.7 ± 0.6 per cent in the mean stellar diameter. Careful attention has been paid to uncertainties, including those in measurements, in the adopted calibrator angular diameters, in the projected values of visibility squared at zero baseline, and to systematic effects. No evidence was found for a circumstellar envelope at 696 nm. The interferometric results have been combined with radial displacements of the stellar atmosphere derived from selected radial velocity data taken from the literature to determine the distance and mean diameter of ℓ Car. The distance is determined to be 525 ± 26 pc and the mean radius  169 ± 8 R_⊙  . Comparison with published values for the distance and mean radius shows excellent agreement, particularly when a common scaling factor from observed radial velocity to pulsation velocity of the stellar atmosphere (the p -factor) is used.     

Imaging the asymmetric dust shell around CI Cam with long baseline optical interferometry

We present the first high angular resolution observation of the B[e] star/X-ray transient object CI Cam, performed with the two-telescope Infrared Optical Telescope Array (IOTA), its upgraded three-telescope version (IOTA3T) and the Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI). Visibilities and closure phases were obtained using the IONIC-3 integrated optics beam combiner. CI Cam was observed in the near-infrared H and K spectral bands, wavelengths well suited to measure the size and study the geometry of the hot dust surrounding CI Cam. The analysis of the visibility data over an 8 yr period from soon after the 1998 outburst to 2006 shows that the dust visibility has not changed over the years. The visibility data show that CI Cam is elongated which confirms the disc-shape of the circumstellar environment and totally rules out the hypothesis of a spherical dust shell. Closure phase measurements show direct evidence of asymmetries in the circumstellar environment of CI Cam and we conclude that the dust surrounding CI Cam lies in an inhomogeneous disc seen at an angle. The near-infrared dust emission appears as an elliptical skewed Gaussian ring with a major axis   a = 7.58 ± 0.24 mas  , an axis ratio   r = 0.39 ± 0.03  and a position angle  θ= 35°± 2°  .     

Black hole shadow image and visibility analysis of Sagittarius A*

The compact dark objects with very large masses residing at the centres of galaxies are believed to be black holes. Due to the gravitational lensing effect, they would cast a shadow larger than their horizon size over the background; the shape and size of this shadow can be calculated. For the supermassive black hole candidate Sgr A*, this shadow spans an angular size of about 50 μas, which is under the resolution attainable with the current astronomical instruments. Such a shadow image of Sgr A* will be observable at about 1 mm wavelength, considering the scatter broadening by the interstellar medium. By simulating the black hole shadow image of Sgr A* with the radiatively inefficient accretion flow model, we demonstrate that analysing the properties of the visibility function can help us determine some parameters of the black hole configuration, which is instructive for the submillimetre Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations of Sgr A* to be made in the near future.     

干涉合成孔径雷达及其在火山研究中的应用(第二部分:阿拉斯加火山的InSAR成像)(英文)

干涉合成孔径雷达是一项能够对地表变形进行测量的遥感技术,在一个巨大区域内,它的变形测量精度可达亚厘米级,而其空间分辨率则在数十米以内。本文对我们应用InSAR技术对阿拉斯加火山进行研究的最新成果进行了总结,同时包括火山的喷发和非喷发活动。这些研究成果表明InSAR不仅能够增进我们对阿拉斯加火山活动的理解,而且还能够增强我们对未来火山喷发情况及其灾害的预测能力。     

小波域多时相干涉SAR数据融合

大气因素和高斯白噪声对由星载干涉SAR系统获取的干涉图相位有很大的影响，可能会极大地降低结果DEM的精度，提出了一种对多时相干涉SAR数据生成的独立DEM进行权重融合的方法，该算法在小波域当中估计了大气和高斯噪声的误差功率，并对多时相DEM进行权重融合。用河北省尚义县地区的ERS-1和ERS-2数据的研究表明，此算法可以很好地提高由干涉SAR获取的DEM的精度。     

利用星载InSAR技术获取DEM及误差来源分析

星载干涉合成孔径雷达(InSAR)技术是一种高效的数字高程模型(DEM)获取方法,对其展开探讨具有十分重要的意义。本文对InSAR高程测量原理进行简要概述,提出获取DEM的相关技术流程,并分析了利用星载InSAR技术获取DEM的误差来源。     

An adaptive loop gain selection for CLEAN deconvolution algorithm

Radio interferometry significantly improves the resolution of observed images, and the final result also relies heavily on data recovery. The Cotton-Schwab CLEAN(CS-Clean) deconvolution approach is a widely used reconstruction algorithm in the field of radio synthesis imaging. However, parameter tuning for this algorithm has always been a difficult task. Here, its performance is improved by considering some internal characteristics of the data. From a mathematical point of view, a peak signal-to-noise-based(PSNRbased) method was introduced to optimize the step length of the steepest descent method in the recovery process. We also found that the loop gain curve in the new algorithm is a good indicator of parameter tuning.Tests show that the new algorithm can effectively solve the problem of oscillation for a large fixed loop gain and provides a more robust recovery.