Finding KBO Flyby Targets for New Horizons     

Spencer  John  Buie  Marc  Young  Leslie  Guo  Yanping  Stern  Alan 《Earth, Moon, and Planets》2003,92(1-4):483-491

Development of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is now fully funded by NASA (Stern and Spencer, this volume). If all goes well, New Horizons will be launched in January 2006, followed by a Jupiter gravity assist in 2007, with Pluto arrival expected in either 2015 or 2016, depending on the launch vehicle chosen. A backup launch date of early 2007, without a Jupiter flyby, would give a Pluto arrival in 2019 or 2020. In either case, a flyby of at least one Kuiper Belt object (KBO) is planned following the Pluto encounter, sometime before the spacecraft reaches a heliocentric distance of 50 AU, in 2021 or 2023 for the 2006 launch, and 2027 or 2029 for the 2007 launch. However, none of the almost 1000 currently-known KBOs will pass close enough to the spacecraft trajectory to be targeted by New Horizons, so the KBO flyby depends on finding a suitable target among the estimated 500,000 KBOs larger than 40 km in diameter. This paper discusses the issues involved in finding one or more KBO targets for New Horizons. The New Horizons team plans its own searches for mission KBOs but will welcome other U.S, or international team who wish to become involved in exchange for mission participation at the KBO.  相似文献   

Middle-ear stiffness of the bottlenose dolphin tursiops truncatus     

Miller  B.S. Zosuls  A.L. Ketten  D.R. Mountain  D.C. 《Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Journal of》2006,31(1):87-94

Previous research on the cetacean auditory system has consisted mostly of behavioral studies on a limited number of species. Little quantitative physiologic data exists on cetacean hearing. The frequency range of hearing varies greatly across different mammalian species. Differences among species correlate with differences in the middle-ear transfer function. Middle-ear transfer functions depend on the mechanical stiffness of the middle ear and the cochlear input impedance. The purpose of this study was to measure the middle-ear stiffness for the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), a species specialized for underwater high-frequency hearing and echolocation. Middle-ear stiffness was measured with a force probe that applied a known displacement to the stapes and measured the restoring force. The average middle-ear stiffness in ten dolphin ears was 1.37 N//spl mu/m, which is considerably higher than that reported for most terrestrial mammals. The relationship between middle-ear stiffness and low-frequency hearing cutoff in Tursiops was shown to be comparable to that of terrestrial mammals.  相似文献   

Fire and ice: unravelling the climatic and volcanic history of James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula     

John Smellie  Anna Nelson  Mark Williams 《Geology Today》2006,22(6):220-226

Back in the mid-nineteenth century British explorer James Clark Ross took his ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus , farther south than anyone else had been. He now lends his name to James Ross Island, a part-volcanic edifice that rises out of the sea off the north-east tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The island records a geological history dating back to the Cretaceous, though its great peaks are volcanic. The most recent rocks of the island record a monumental struggle between fire and ice, the volcanoes, and the ice sheets that cover them. The glacigenic sediments that are interspersed with the volcanic rocks contain rich fossil assemblages which suggest that at times, the climate was warmer, with the ice retreating. Their study may help us to delimit the patterns of climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula region as Earth's global climate warms.  相似文献   

Effect of signal contamination in matched-filter detection of the signal on a cluttered background     

Theiler  J. Foy  B.R. 《Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE》2006,3(1):98-102

To derive a matched filter for detecting a weak target signal in a hyperspectral image, an estimate of the band-to-band covariance of the target-free background scene is required. We investigate the effects of including some of the target signal in the background scene. Although the covariance is contaminated by the presence of a target signal (there is increased variance in the direction of the target signature), we find that the matched filter is not necessarily affected. In fact, if the variation in plume strength is strictly uncorrelated with the variation in background spectra, the matched filter and its signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) performance will not be impaired. While there is little a priori reason to expect significant correlation between the plume and the background, there usually is some residual correlation, and this correlation leads to a suppressing effect that limits the SCR obtainable even for strong plumes. These effects are described and quantified analytically, and the crucial role of this correlation is illustrated with some numerical examples using simulated plumes superimposed on real hyperspectral imagery. In one example, we observe an order-of-magnitude loss in SCR for a matched filter based on the contaminated covariance.  相似文献   

The 2dF QSO Redshift Survey – XII. The spectroscopic catalogue and luminosity function     

S. M. Croom  R. J. Smith  B. J. Boyle  T. Shanks  L. Miller  P. J. Outram  N. S. Loaring 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2004,349(4):1397-1418

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Radiation exposure and Mission Strategies for Interplanetary Manned Missions (REMSIM)   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

C. Cougnet  N. B. Crosby  S. Eckersley  C. Foullon  V. Guarnieri  S. Guatelli  D. Heynderickx  A. Holmes-Siedle  C. Lobascio  S. Masiello  P. Nieminen  G. Parisi  P. Parodi  M. A. Perino  M. G. Pia  R. Rampini  P. Spillantini  V. Tamburini  E. Tracino 《Earth, Moon, and Planets》2004,94(3-4):279-285

Cosmic radiation is an important problem for human interplanetary missions. The “Radiation Exposure and Mission Strategies for Interplanetary Manned Missions–REMSIM” study is summarised here. They are related to current strategies and countermeasures to ensure the protection of astronauts from radiation during interplanetary missions, with specific reference to: radiation environment and its variability; radiation effects on the crew; transfer trajectories and associated fluences; vehicle and surface habitat concepts; passive and active shielding concepts; space weather monitoring and warning systems.  相似文献   

On The Concept Of Periapsis In Hill’s Problem     

B.F. Villac  D.J. Scheeres 《Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy》2004,90(1-2):165-178

The concept of closest approach is analyzed in Hill’s problem, resulting in a partitioning of the position space. The different behavior between the direct and retrograde motion is explained analytically, resulting in a simple estimate of the variation of Hill’s periodic and quasi-circular orbits as a function of the Jacobi constant. The local behavior of the orbits on the zero velocity surfaces and an analytical definition of local escape and capture in Hill’s problem are also given.  相似文献   

Optical monitoring of the quasar 4C 38.41     

B. Peng  J. Wu  X. Zhou 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2003,346(2):483-488

The results of a photometric monitoring of the quasar 4C 38.41, performed at the optical R and B bands in 2002 February–March, are presented. With a 60/90 cm Schmidt telescope at the Xinglong station of the National Astronomical Observatories of China, we observed the source exhibiting amplitude variations of up to 0.78 mag in both bands during the whole campaign. Intraday and even intranight variations are detected as well. A typical variability time-scale of about 36 d is derived from our 2-month observations at the optical bands, which is identical to that found at a radio wavelength of 92 cm, suggesting a common origin for the variations in 4C 38.41 from optical to radio bands.  相似文献   

Parameters of the intense X-ray and gamma-ray radiation from the solar flare of May 20, 2002, as observed from the Coronas-F spacecraft     

A. V. Bogomolov  A. P. Ignat’ev  K. Kudela  S. N. Kuznetsov  Yu. I. Logachev  O. V. Morozov  I. N. Myagkova  S. N. Oparin  A. A. Pertsov  S. I. Svertilov  B. Yu. Yushkov 《Astronomy Letters》2003,29(3):199-204

We consider temporal, spectral, and polarization parameters of the hard X-ray and gamma-ray radiation observed during the solar flare of May 20, 2002, in the course of experiments with the SONG and SPR-N instruments onboard the Coronas-F spacecraft. This flare is one of the most intense gamma-ray events among all of the bursts of solar hard electromagnetic radiation detected since the beginning of the Coronas-F operation (since July 31, 2001) and one of the few gamma-ray events observed during solar cycle 23. A simultaneous analysis of the Coronas-F and GOES data on solar thermal X-ray radiation suggests that, apart from heating due to currents of matter in the the flare region, impulsive heating due to the injection of energetic electrons took place during the near-limb flare S21E65 of May 20, 2002. These electrons produced intense hard X-ray and gamma-ray radiation. The spectrum of this radiation extends up to energies ≥7 MeV. Intense gamma-ray lines are virtually unobservable against the background of the nonthermal continuum. The polarization of the hard X-ray (20–100 keV) radiation was estimated to be ≤15–20%. No significant increase in the flux of energetic protons from the flare under consideration was found. At the same time, according to ACE data, the fluxes of energetic electrons in interplanetary space increased shortly (～25 min) after the flare.  相似文献   

Building blocks in hierarchical clustering scenarios and their connection with damped Lyα systems     

Sofía A. Cora  Patricia B. Tissera †  Diego G. Lambas ‡  Mirta B. Mosconi 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2003,343(3):959-970

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