中国SLR在南半球观测取得良好进展

本文简要介绍了用中国研制的人造卫星激光测距仪(SLR),安装在阿根廷与San Juan大学天文台开展SLR合作观测与研究的意义,以及这个SLR系统的指标和性能.该仪器系统于2006年初在阿根廷国立San Juan大学天文台工作以来,进展良好,取得了观测数量丰富、精度高的优良结果.该合作的进展状况和未来的发展设想也在文中做了介绍.     

用于中阿合作的卫星激光测距(SLR)系统的现状和未来

简要介绍了用于中国科学院国家天文台与阿根廷San Juan大学合作观测与研究的一个高精度卫星激光测距(SLR)系统.该望远镜口径为60cm的SLR系统由中国研制,于2005年秋被运往阿根廷,安装在阿根廷国立San Juan大学天文台,San Juan大学建立了观测室.准备了工作条件.该系统于2006年2月底完成调试并开始运行.在过去的两年阃,该系统保持了良好的工作状态,由于San Juan具有良好的天气条件,该系统取得了丰富的高精度观测资料.国际激光测距服务认为该仪器的工作对国际激光测距系统是重要的,希望对其增加白天测距的功能.文章也简单介绍了该SLR站未来升级改造和发展的计划.     

Evidence of Kinetic Alfvén Waves in the Solar Wind at 1 AU

Several independent lines of observational evidence of the existence of kinetic Alfvén waves (KAWs) in the solar wind are briefly reviewed. Each piece of evidence is inconclusive when considered separately, but when taken together, it is reasonable to conclude from these observations that KAWs in the form of kinetic Alfvén turbulence are almost always present in the free-flowing solar wind near 1 AU and, by inference, perhaps throughout much of the heliosphere.     

The analogy between sunquakes and water waves

To investigate the seismic waves generated at the surface of the convection zone by a sunquake, the solar convection zone is modeled as an incompressible fluid layer of finite depth which is excited by a pressure pulse just above the solar surface. Solutions for the surface displacement ζ as a function of time are obtained by solving the linearized Euler equations for wave propagation in an inviscid, incompressible fluid. Approximate solutions are derived using the method of stationary phase and formulas are obtained for the position of the wave crests versus time and the decay of the wave amplitude versus distance. Despite the very simple nature of the model, the resulting time–distance relation is found to exhibit the correct order of magnitude when compared to the observations of the flare initiated sunquake of 9 July 1996. However, the water wave model cannot fully explain the observations because, for one thing, the distance in between successive wave crests is greater than that seen in the observations. One may conclude that the sunquake is probably composed primarily of acoustic waves, that is, p modes and not f modes.     

The Most Intense Electron-Scale Current Sheets in the Solar Wind

Previous analysis of magnetohydrodynamic-scale currents in high-speed solar wind near 1 AU suggests that the most intense current-carrying structures occur at electron scales and are characterized by average current densities on the order of \(1~\mbox{pA}/\mbox{cm}^{2}\). Here, this prediction is verified by examining the effects of the measurement bandwidth and/or measurement resolution on the analysis of synthetic solar wind signals. Assuming Taylor’s hypothesis holds for the energetically dominant fluctuations at kinetic scales, the results show that when \(\nu_{c}\gg \nu_{b}\), where \(\nu_{c}\) is the measurement bandwidth and \(\nu_{b} \approx 1/3~\mbox{Hz}\) is the break frequency, the average scale of the most intense fluctuations in the current density proxy is approximately \(1/\nu_{c}\), and the average peak current density is a weakly increasing function that scales approximately like \(\nu_{c}^{0.1}\).     

Early Optical Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts Compared with Their Gamma- and X-Ray Characteristics Using a MASTER Global Network of Robotic Telescopes from Lomonosov Moscow State University

We present the results of early observations for 130 error-boxes of gamma-ray bursts performed with the Mobile Astronomical System of TElescope-Robots (MASTER) global network of robotic telescopes from Moscow State University in fully automatic mode (2011–2017). Among them, GRB 130907A, GRB 120811C, GRB 110801A, GRB 120404A, GRB 140129B, GRB140311B, and GRB 160227A are considered in details. Among these 130 gamma-ray bursts, in the first 60 s after the trigger with the Swift, Fermi, INTEGRAL, MAXI, Lomonosov, and Konus-Wind orbital observatories, the MASTER was pointed on 51 gamma-ray bursts, being the leader in terms of the first pointing. Full observation automation and MASTER own real-time image processing software allowed us to obtain unique data on early optical emission that accompanied 44 gamma-ray bursts (GRB 110801A, GRB120106A, GRB 120404A, GRB 120811C, GRB 120907A, GRB 121011A, GRB 130122A, GRB 130907A, GRB 131030A, GRB 131125A, GRB 140103A, GRB 140108A, GRB 140129B, GRB 140206A, GRB 140304A, GRB 140311B, GRB 140512A, GRB 140629A, GRB 140801A, GRB140907A, GRB 140930B, GRB141028A, GRB 141225A, GRB 150210A, GRB 150211A, GRB 150301B, GRB 150323C, GRB 150404A/Fermi trigger 449861706, GRB 150403A, GRB 150413A, GRB 150518A, GRB 150627A, GRB 151021A, GRB 151215A, GRB 160104A, GRB 160117B, GRB 160131A, GRB 160227A, GRB 160425A, GRB 160611A, GRB 160625B, GRB 160804A, GRB 160910A, GRB 161017A, GRB 161117A, GRB 161119A). We obtain light curves for 13 gamma-ray bursts among the above listed ones and compare the data in the optical (MASTER), X-ray (Swift-XRT), and hard X-ray (Swift-BAT) ranges.     

Compressible Fluid Model for the Seismic Waves Generated by A Sunquake

The solar convection zone is modeled as a horizontally stratified atmosphere with a constant gravitational field and an adiabatic temperature gradient (a neutrally stratified polytrope). At equilibrium, the gas pressure and density decreases to zero at the solar surface so that the solar surface is treated as a free surface which is bounded by vacuum. The evolution of small amplitude perturbations about the equilibrium state is described by the linearized Euler equations for an inviscid compressible fluid with an adiabatic equation of state. A sunquake is initiated at time zero by means of an initial perturbation with a Gaussian velocity profile and the exact solution of the initial value problem is obtained in terms of a Fourier integral. Comparisons between theory and observations indicate that this highly simplified model is able to predict the propagation of sunquake waves across the solar surface with an error of approximately 10% or 20%.