The mass ratio of Charon to Pluto from Hubble Space Telescope astrometry with the fine guidance sensors     

C.B Olkin  L.H Wasserman  O.G Franz 《Icarus》2003,164(1):254-259

The mass ratio of Charon to Pluto is a basic parameter describing the binary system and is necessary for determining the individual masses and densities of these two bodies. Previous measurements of the mass ratio have been made, but the solutions differ significantly (Null et al., 1993; Young et al., 1994; Null and Owen, 1996; Foust et al., 1997; Tholen and Buie, 1997). We present the first observations of Pluto and Charon with a well-calibrated astrometric instrument—the fine guidance sensors on the Hubble Space Telescope. We observed the motion of Pluto and Charon about the system barycenter over 4.4 days (69% of an orbital period) and determined the mass ratio to be 0.122±0.008 which implies a density of 1.8 to 2.1 g cm⁻³ for Pluto and 1.6 to 1.8 g cm⁻³ for Charon. The resulting rock-mass fractions for Pluto and Charon are higher than expected for bodies formed in the outer solar nebula, possibly indicating significant postaccretion loss of volatiles.  相似文献   

The emission distribution in RR Pictoris     

L. Schmidtobreick  C. Tappert  I. Saviane 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2003,342(1):145-150

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Spectroscopic studies of three novae     

V. P. Arkhipova  M. A. Burlak  V. F. Esipov 《Astronomy Letters》2002,28(2):100-114

We present our spectroscopic observations of the novae V1425, V1493, and V1494 Aql carried out with the 125-cm telescope at the Crimean Station of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute in the wavelength range 4000–11000 Å. We measured the emission-line intensities, determined the nova shell expansion velocities from the line profile FWHMs and components, and estimated the interstellar reddening from the first members of the Balmer series. The chemical composition of the nova shells is analyzed. Nitrogen and oxygen were found to be overabundant in V1425 and V1494 Aql; the helium abundance turned out to be normal in the two stars.  相似文献   

Pulsar magnetic field for an infinitely conductive accretion disk     

N. R. Sibgatullin  T. A. Doroshenko 《Astronomy Letters》2002,28(11):769-772

The magnetic-field distribution outside a flat, infinitely conductive unbounded disk in the field of a point magnetic dipole is determined. A relationship is established between the problem of magnetic-field determination and the problem of the flow of an ideal incompressible fluid around an infinitely thin disk.  相似文献   

Gravitational waves from newly born, hot neutron stars     

V. Ferrari  G. Miniutti  J. A. Pons 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2003,342(2):629-638

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Gamma-Hadron Separation using Čerenkov Photon Density Fluctuations     

V. R. Chitnis  P. N. Bhat 《Experimental Astronomy》2002,13(2):77-100

In the atmospheric Čerenkov technique γ-rays are detected against the abundant background produced by hadronic showers. In order to improve the signal to noise ratio of theexperiment, it is necessary to reject a significant fraction of hadronic showers. Traditional background rejection methods based on image shape parameters have been extensively used for the data from imaging telescopes. However, non-imaging Čerenkov telescopes have to develop very different means of statistically identifying and removing cosmic ray events. Some of the parameters, which could be potentially important for non-imaging arrays, are the temporal and spectral differences, the lateral distributions and density fluctuations of Čerenkov photons generated by γ-ray and hadron primaries. Here we study the differences in fluctuations of Čerenkov photon density in the light pool at the observation level from showers initiated by photons and those initiated by protons or heavier nuclei. The database of simulated events for the PACT array has been used to evaluate the efficiency of the new technique. Various types of density fluctuations like the short range and medium range fluctuations as well as flatness parameter are studied. The estimated quality factors reflect the efficiencies with which the hadrons can be rejected from the data. Since some of these parameters are independent, the cuts may be applied in tandem and we demonstrate that the proton rejection efficiency of ∼90% can be achieved. Use of density fluctuations is particularly suited for wavefront sampling observations and it seems to be a good technique to improve the signal to noise ratio. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.  相似文献   

Ghosts of the Milky Way: a search for topology in new quasar catalogues     

S. J. Weatherley  S. J. Warren  S. M. Croom  R. J. Smith  B. J. Boyle  T. Shanks  L. Miller  M. P. Baltovic 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2003,342(1):L9-L13

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SN 1999E: another piece in the supernova–gamma-ray burst connection puzzle     

L. Rigon  M. Turatto  S. Benetti  A. Pastorello  E. Cappellaro  I. Aretxaga  O. Vega  V. Chavushyan  F. Patat  I. J. Danziger  M. Salvo 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2003,340(1):191-196

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Double–double radio galaxies: remnants of merged supermassive binary black holes     

F. K. Liu  Xue-Bing Wu  S. L. Cao 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2003,340(2):411-416

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Digital photographic photometry of NGC 5253 and NGC 2915     

J. L. Sérsic  C. J. Donzelli 《Astrophysics and Space Science》1992,193(1):87-94

The surface digital photometry for NGC 5253 and NGC 2915 is given. The luminosity profiles and colour gradients are discussed and compared. It is concluded that NGC 2915 differs from NGC 5253, both in the extension and intensity of the star burst event because of the kinematical behaviour of the captured gas.CONICET, Buenos Aires, Visiting Astronomer, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, La Serena, Chile, operated by NSF  相似文献