The Pre-CME Sun

The coronal mass ejection (CME) phenomenon occurs in closed magnetic field regions on the Sun such as active regions, filament regions, transequatorial interconnection regions, and complexes involving a combination of these. This chapter describes the current knowledge on these closed field structures and how they lead to CMEs. After describing the specific magnetic structures observed in the CME source region, we compare the substructures of CMEs to what is observed before eruption. Evolution of the closed magnetic structures in response to various photospheric motions over different time scales (convection, differential rotation, meridional circulation) somehow leads to the eruption. We describe this pre-eruption evolution and attempt to link them to the observed features of CMEs. Small-scale energetic signatures in the form of electron acceleration (signified by nonthermal radio bursts at metric wavelengths) and plasma heating (observed as compact soft X-ray brightening) may be indicative of impending CMEs. We survey these pre-eruptive energy releases using observations taken before and during the eruption of several CMEs. Finally, we discuss how the observations can be converted into useful inputs to numerical models that can describe the CME initiation.     

Dust Near The Sun

We review the current knowledge and understanding of dust in the inner solar system. The major sources of the dust population in the inner solar system are comets and asteroids, but the relative contributions of these sources are not quantified. The production processes inward from 1 AU are: Poynting-Robertson deceleration of particles outside of 1 AU, fragmentation into dust due to particle-particle collisions, and direct dust production from comets. The loss processes are: dust collisional fragmentation, sublimation, radiation pressure acceleration, sputtering, and rotational bursting. These loss processes as well as dust surface processes release dust compounds in the ambient interplanetary medium. Between 1 and 0.1 AU the dust number densities and fluxes can be described by inward extrapolation of 1 AU measurements, assuming radial dependences that describe particles in close to circular orbits. Observations have confirmed the general accuracy of these assumptions for regions within 30° latitude of the ecliptic plane. The dust densities are considerably lower above the solar poles but Lorentz forces can lift particles of sizes < 5 μm to high latitudes and produce a random distribution of small grains that varies with the solar magnetic field. Also long-period comets are a source of out-of-ecliptic particles. Under present conditions no prominent dust ring exists near the Sun. We discuss the recent observations of sungrazing comets. Future in-situ experiments should measure the complex dynamics of small dust particles, identify the contribution of cometary dust to the inner-solar-system dust cloud, and determine dust interactions in the ambient interplanetary medium. The combination of in-situ dust measurements with particle and field measurements is recommended.     

The Sun in Time

The Sun varies in time over at least twenty orders of magnitude. In this highly selective look at a vast subject, the focus is on solar variations related to the magnetic field structure of the heliosphere since these changes affect the propagation of cosmic rays in the heliosphere. The root of the changes is the magnetic field pattern near the solar surface. Some key aspects of the behavior of this pattern are reviewed. Recent solar activity has been unlike any experienced in living memory and several of the observed oddities are noted. Included here is a first attempt to directly compare three decades of magnetic field measurements in coronal holes with the heliospheric magnetic field at 1 AU. Results support the idea that nearly all the open magnetic flux from the Sun originates in coronal holes (including those close to active regions).     

恋恋骄阳 慵懒度假风

8月来临,把握这最后的骄阳,海边旅行是时候启程了。海风拂面,悠悠海蓝,大海的蔚蓝色为你注入一抹舒心的清新感。海滩配备自是少不了,绚丽的防晒罩衫和度假风的迷嬉长裙也必须列进Must-have清单。以下介绍部分单品,献给迫不及待想收拾行李将要度假的人们。     

The extremely X-ray bright Wolf-Rayet star HD193793

The Einstein Observatory showed that Wolf-Rayet stars have a much larger range in the ratio of X-ray to bolometric luminosity than normal early-type stars. EXOSAT measurements of HD193T93 (WCT+abs) show it to be extremely X-ray bright. This result is probably not connected with the infra-red and radio outburst that the star underwent in 1977. Other Einstein X-ray sources which are probably identified with Wolf-Rayet stars are newly reported.     

The Magnetic Sun: Reversals and Long-Term Variations

A didactic introduction to current thinking on some aspects of the solar dynamo is given for geophysicists and planetary scientists.     

后院 留住原味阳光

<正>居住在城市的人们无法随时享受乡下广袤的田园风光,不如在家里建一个属于自己的小花园吧,下面我们收集了一些美丽的后院设计,或许你也想要在家中建造这样一个美丽的小花园!     

星点坐标辅助的全天区三角形星图识别算法

随着当前星敏感器视场（FOV）的增大,探测能力的提高,一帧图中拍摄到的恒星更多。但是受星敏感器光谱范围的限制及空间环境干扰影响,星等测试精度一般不高于0.2 mV。为了充分发挥当前星敏感器视场和探测能力的优势,并避免星等误差的影响,提高全天区星图识别算法在线应用的适用性,提出了一种星点坐标辅助的全天区三角形星图识别算法。该方法采用"全局初步搜索识别—局部精细匹配验证—最优结果选取"的算法思想。首先,根据星敏感器探测到的极限星等范围构建导航星表,选取亮星构建角距星表,既确保了星表的完备性,又有利于充分利用星敏感器的探测能力。然后,在三角形约束条件下进行角距匹配识别,得到一个或多个导航三角形,在该识别环节提出了非线性矢量法查找星表,既提高了定位精度,又能采用单精度数据类型降低存储空间。最后,提出局部天区星点坐标匹配算法进一步消除冗余匹配,同时又识别出视场内更多的观测星,有利于提高识别率和定姿精度。试验结果表明,与其他一些经典的星图识别算法相比,所提算法在识别率和星表容量方面更有优势。识别率可达99.9%,且随着星等的增加,存储容量增加的最少。所提算法更加适于大视场、高星等敏感范围的星敏感器在线应用。     

The Solar Wind and the Sun in the Past

Exposure to the solar wind can have significant long term consequences for planetary atmospheres, especially for planets such as Mars that are not protected by global magnetospheres. Estimating the effects of solar wind exposure requires knowledge of the history of the solar wind. Much of what we know about the Sun’s past behavior is based on inferences from observations of young solar-like stars. Stellar analogs of the weak solar wind cannot be detected directly, but the interaction regions between these winds and the interstellar medium have been detected and used to estimate wind properties. I here review these observations, with emphasis on what they suggest about the history of the solar wind.     

The Local Bubble and Interstellar Material Near the Sun

The properties of interstellar matter at the Sun are regulated by our location with respect to a void in the local matter distribution, known as the Local Bubble. The Local Bubble (LB) is bounded by associations of massive stars and fossil supernovae that have disrupted dense interstellar matter (ISM), driving low density intermediate velocity ISM into the void. The Sun appears to be located in one of these flows of low density material. This nearby interstellar matter, dubbed the Local Fluff, has a bulk velocity of ∼19 km s⁻¹ in the local standard of rest. The flow is coming from the direction of the gas and dust ring formed where the Loop I supernova remnant merges into the LB. Optical polarization data suggest that the local interstellar magnetic field lines are draped over the heliosphere. A longstanding discrepancy between the high thermal pressure of plasma filling the LB and low thermal pressures in the embedded Local Fluff cloudlets is partially mitigated when the ram pressure component parallel to the cloudlet flow direction is included.     

The massive star distribution in the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds

The numbers and distribution of Population I O-type stars and Wolf-Rayet stars are reviewed. The numbers of known WR stars in the Galaxy, the LMC and the SMC are 185, 114, and 9, respectively. Distances and galactic distributions determined by various authors are compared. The single star and binary distributions are discussed in the light of evolutionary studies.     

The Pre-Main-Sequence Star RU Lupi: An Extreme T Tauri star

In this work I will try to give the most general complete view, comparatively with the conciseness, on RU Lupi, which is an Extreme Classical T Tauri star.T Tauri stars (TTSs) form a class of low luminosity stars which are going to the Main Sequence. They are young contracting objects that are in a particular Pre-Main-Sequence (PMS) evolutionary phase. The study of the Pre-Main-Sequence Stars (PMSSs) can provide crucial information on stellar evolution and formation of planetary systems, and therefore also indirect information on the processes occurred in the primeval solar system.For this reason, firstly I will briefly comment a sort of classification of stars in PMS phases (Section 2); then I will emphasize the main characteristics of TTSs and the current theories (Section 3). The up-to-date observational properties of RU Lupi (Section 4) and a discussion on their explanation within the framework of theories (Section 5) will allow me to draw the conclusions (Section 6) and to argue the most convenient line of investigation (Section 7) both experimental and theoretical for a better understanding of the underlying physics of these systems. Finally (Section 8), I will comment in general on the methodology of investigation of highly variable cosmic sources.An original result has been obtained in this work: the flare-like events (FLEs) of RU Lupi, occurring in all wavelength regions, are periodic with aP _FLE=27.686±0.002 days. This periodicity could be the rotational period of the star.     

Systematic centroid error compensation for the simple Gaussian PSF in an electronic star map simulator

Simulated star maps serve as convenient inputs for the test of a star sensor, whose standardability mostly depends on the centroid precision of the simulated star image, so it is necessary to accomplish systematic error compensation for the simple Gaussian PSF（or SPSF, in which PSF denotes point spread function）. Firstly, the error mechanism of the SPSF is described, the reason of centroid deviations of the simulated star images based on SPSF lies in the unreasonable sampling positions（the centers of the covered pixels） of the Gaussian probability density function. Then in reference to the IPSF simulated star image spots regarded as ideal ones, and by means of normalization and numerical fitting, the pixel center offset function expressions are got, so the systematic centroid error compensation can be executed simply by substituting the pixel central position with the offset position in the SPSF. Finally, the centroid precision tests are conducted for the three big error cases of Gaussian radius r = 0.5, 0.6, 0.671 pixel, and the centroid accuracy with the compensated SPSF（when r = 0.5） is improved to 2.83 times that of the primitive SPSF, reaching a 0.008 pixel error, an equivalent level of the IPSF. Besides its simplicity, the compensated SPSF further increases both the shape similarity and the centroid precision of simulated star images, which helps to improve the image quality and the standardability of the outputs of an electronic star map simulator（ESS）.     

Astrometric study of Barnard's star

Space Science Reviews -     

黎莉莉 充满传奇色彩的明星

岁月悠悠,时光荏苒,在上个世纪三十年代的电影界里明星云集,佳丽如云。然而,在那争艳斗美的美女明星中有一个女明星以漂亮、健壮、结实、体育运动好而博得观众和影迷的喜欢,她的名字就叫黎莉莉,也被影迷称作为"运动明星"。而黎莉莉的一生充满了惊人的传奇色彩。在苦艰的童年中拼搏成名黎莉莉出生在一个极其不平凡的家庭里,她的父母亲都是中共地下党员,尤其是她的父亲钱壮飞曾为保卫中共中央的安全作出了重大的贡献。     

Recursive mode star identification algorithms

Star identification can be accomplished by several different available algorithms that identify the stars observed by a star tracker. However, efficiency and reliability remain key issues and the availability of new active pixel cameras requires new approaches. Two novel algorithms for recursive mode star identification are presented here. The first approach is derived by the spherical polygon search (SP-search) algorithm, it was used to access all the cataloged stars observed by the sensor field-of-view (FOV) and recursively add/remove candidate cataloged stars according to the predicted image motion induced by camera attitude dynamics. Star identification is then accomplished by a star pattern matching technique which identifies the observed stars in the reference catalog. The second method uses star neighborhood information and a catalog neighborhood pointer matrix to access the star catalog. In the recursive star identification process, and under the assumption of "slow" attitude dynamics, only the stars in the neighborhood of previously identified stars are considered for star identification in the succeeding frames. Numerical tests are performed to validate the absolute and relative efficiency of the proposed methods.