Speckle imaging of Titan at 2 microns: surface albedo, haze optical depth, and tropospheric clouds 1996-1998     

S.G. Gibbard  B. Macintosh  C.E. Max  I. de Pater  A.M. Ghez  C.P. McKay 《Icarus》2004,169(2):429-439

We present results from 14 nights of observations of Titan in 1996-1998 using near-infrared (centered at 2.1 microns) speckle imaging at the 10-meter W.M. Keck Telescope. The observations have a spatial resolution of 0.06 arcseconds. We detect bright clouds on three days in October 1998, with a brightness about 0.5% of the brightness of Titan. Using a 16-stream radiative transfer model (DISORT) to model the central equatorial longitude of each image, we construct a suite of surface albedo models parameterized by the optical depth of Titan's hydrocarbon haze layer. From this we conclude that Titan's equatorial surface albedo has plausible values in the range of 0-0.20. Titan's minimum haze optical depth cannot be constrained from this modeling, but an upper limit of 0.3 at this wavelength range is found. More accurate determination of Titan's surface albedo and haze optical depth, especially at higher latitudes, will require a model that fully considers the 3-dimensional nature of Titan's atmosphere.  相似文献   

Keck near-infrared observations of Saturn's E and G rings during Earth's ring plane crossing in August 1995     

Imke de Pater  Shuleen Chau Martin 《Icarus》2004,172(2):446-454

We present near-infrared (1.24-2.26 μm) images of Saturn's E and G rings which were taken with the W.M. Keck telescope in 1995 August 9-11, during the period that Earth crossed Saturn's ring plane. Our data confirm that the E ring is very blue. Its radial and vertical structure are found to be remarkably similar to that apparent in the HST ringplane crossing data at visible wavelengths, reinforcing models of the ring's peculiar narrow or very steep particle size distribution. Our data show unambiguously that the satellite Tethys is a secondary source of material for the E ring. The G ring is found to be distinctly red, similar in color to Jupiter's main ring, indicative of a (more typical) broad particle size distribution.  相似文献   

Lithoprobe east: results from reflection profiling of the continental margin: Grand Banks Region.     

Beatrice de  Voogd  Charlotte E. Keen 《Geophysical Journal International》1987,89(1):195-200

Summary. The 1985 Lithoprobe East profiles resolve deep crustal structure of the Grand Banks off eastern Canada. Basins are 7 to 20 km deep, and bounded by major faults traceable to Mono depth. The lower crust is reflective along much of the survey, and the top of this reflective layer has a variable depth. Prominent and often surprisingly flat Mono reflections are observed. Puzzling rotated fault blocks are imaged at the continent-ocean transition.  相似文献   

Spatially resolved spectroscopy of the E+A galaxies in the z= 0.32 cluster AC 114   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Michael B. Pracy  Warrick J. Couch  Chris Blake  Kenji Bekki  Craig Harrison  Matthew Colless  Harald Kuntschner  Roberto de Propris 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2005,359(4):1421-1432

We present spatially resolved intermediate-resolution spectroscopy of a sample of 12 E+A galaxies in the   z = 0.32  rich galaxy cluster AC 114, obtained with the FLAMES multi-integral field unit system on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory. Previous integrated spectroscopy of all these galaxies by Couch & Sharples had shown them to have strong Balmer line absorption and an absence of [O  ii ]λ3727 emission – the defining characteristics of the 'E+A' spectral signature, indicative of an abrupt halt to a recent episode of quite vigorous star formation. We have used our spectral data to determine the radial variation in the strength of Hδ absorption in these galaxies and hence map out the distribution of this recently formed stellar population. Such information provides important clues as to what physical event might have been responsible for this quite dramatic change in star formation activity in the recent past of these galaxies. We find a diversity of behaviour amongst these galaxies in terms of the radial variation in Hδ absorption: four galaxies show little Hδ absorption across their entire extent; it would appear they were misidentified as E+A galaxies in the earlier integrated spectroscopic studies. The remainder show strong Hδ absorption, with a gradient that is either negative (Hδ equivalent width decreasing with radius), flat or positive . By comparison with numerical simulations we suggest that the first of these different types of radial behaviour provides evidence for a merger/interaction origin, whereas the latter two types of behaviour are more consistent with the truncation of star formation in normal disc galaxies with the Hδ gradient becoming increasingly positive with time after truncation. It would seem therefore that more than one physical mechanism is responsible for E+A formation in the same environment.  相似文献   

Classical T Tauri Stars and Substellar Analogs     

D. Barrado Y Navascués  E.L. Martín  R. Jayawardhana  S. Mohanty 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2004,292(1-4):665-672

We propose a spectroscopic criterion based on Hα equivalent width and spectral type to classify classical T Tauri stars and substellar analogs. We argue that accreting objects can be identified from low-resolution optical spectroscopy, when their Hα flux is stronger than the saturation limit at Log {Lum(Hα)/Lum(bol)} = ?3.3. Additional criteria, such as the relation between HeI5876 or HeI6678 and Hα, or the ratios between the components of the CaII infrared triplet, are also discussed. We have tested the reliability of these criteria by applying them to several objects with masses in the range 0.11–0.025 M_⊙, which belong to nearby star forming regions and the TW Hya association.  相似文献   

Instruments, Detectors and the Future of Astronomy with Large Ground Based Telescopes     

Douglas A. Simons  Paola Amico  Dietrich Baade  Sam Barden  Randall Campbell  Gert Finger  Kirk Gilmore  Roland Gredel  Paul Hickson  Steve Howell  Norbert Hubin  Andreas Kaufer  Ralf Kohley  Philip MacQueen  Sergej Markelov  Mike Merrill  Satoshi Miyazaki  Hidehiko Nakaya  Darragh O'Donoghue  Tino Oliva  Andrea Richichi  Derrick Salmon  Ricardo Schmidt  Hongjun Su  Simon Tulloch  Maria Luisa García Vargas  R. Mark Wagner  Olivier Wiecha  Binxun Ye 《Experimental Astronomy》2005,19(1-3):15-44

Results of a survey of instrumentation and detector systems, either currently deployed or planned for use at telescopes larger than 3.5 m, in ground based observatories world-wide, are presented. This survey revealed a number of instrumentation design trends at optical, near, and mid-infrared wavelengths. Some of the most prominent trends include the development of vastly larger optical detector systems (> 10⁹ pixels) than anything built to date, and the frequent use of mosaics of near-infrared detectors – something that was quite rare only a decade ago in astronomy. Some future science applications for detectors are then explored, in an attempt to build a bridge between current detectors and what will be needed to support the research ambitions of astronomers in the future.  相似文献   

Accurate jovian radio flux density measurements show ammonia to be subsaturated in the upper troposphere     

James Gibson  W.J. Welch  Imke de Pater 《Icarus》2005,173(2):439-446

The availability of new accurate radio flux densities of Jupiter in and around the λ?1.3 cm ammonia absorption band, one from ground-based radio data and five from the WMAP satellite, permits re-examination of the structure of the jovian upper troposphere. These flux densities, with accuracies of 1-3%, indicate that the jovian atmospheric ammonia is globally subsaturated within and above the ammonia cloud tops, 0.4 bar?P?0.6 bar, and subsolar (by a factor of 2) below the cloud base, 0.6 bar?P?2 bar.  相似文献   

Behaviour of the SMF method for the numerical integration of satellite orbits     

Pablo Martín  José M. Ferrándiz 《Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy》1995,63(1):29-40

The SMF algorithms were recently developed by the authors as a multistep generalization of the ScheifeleG-functions one-step method. Like the last, the proposed codes integrate harmonic oscillations without truncation error and the perturbing parameter appears as a factor of that error when integrating perturbed oscillations. Therefore they seemed to be convenient for the accurate integration of orbital problems after the application of linearizing transformations, such as KS or BF. In this paper we present several numerical experiments concerning the propagation of Earth satellite orbits, that illustrate the performance of the the SMF method. In general, it provides greater accuracy than the usual standard algorithms for similar computational cost.  相似文献   

Dynamics of very rich open clusters     

R. de la Fuente Marcos  C. de la Fuente Marcos 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2002,280(4):381-404

The oldest open clusters in our Galaxy set the lower limit to the age of the Galactic Disk (9–10 Gyr). Although they appear to be very rich now, it is clear that their primordial populations were much larger. Often considered as transitional objects, these populous open clusters show structural differences with respect to globular clusters so their dynamics and characteristic evolutionary time scales can also be different. On the other hand, their large membership lead to different dynamical evolution as compared with average open clusters. In this paper, the differential features of the evolution of rich open clusters are studied using N-body simulations, including several of the largest (10⁴ stars) published direct collisional N-body calculations so far, which were performed on a CRAY YMP. The disruption rate of rich open clusters is analysed in detail and the effect of the initial spatial distribution of the stars in the cluster on its dynamics is studied. The results show that cluster life-time depends on this initial distribution, decreasing when it is more concentrated. The effect of stellar evolution on the dynamical evolution of rich clusters is an important subject that also has been considered here. We demonstrate that the cluster's life-expectancy against evaporation increases because of mass loss by evolving high-mass stars. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.  相似文献   

The ionized gas in the Galactic Center Radio Arc     

N.J. RodrÍguez-Fernández  J. MartÍn-Pintado  P. de Vicente 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2002,281(1-2):333-334

  相似文献