Effect of liquid bridge form on oscillatory thermocapillary convection under 1 g and μg conditions

This study analyses the effect of temperature difference between hot and cool disk (ΔT), and non-dimensional liquid bridge volume (V/V_o) on the transition process from steady thermocapillary convection to periodic or chaotic thermocapillary convection in a liquid bridge modeled after the floating zone method under normal gravity and microgravity conditions. From normal gravity and drop shaft experiments, the difference of the regime of the steady state and the oscillatory state was clarified on the ΔT−V/V_o plane under 1 g and μg conditions. A gap or stability region was observed in the specific V/V_o range under 1 g conditions. In the gap or stable region, after the gravity changed from 1 g to μg conditions, the temperature signals showed oscillation. From these results, the critical temperature difference under the μg conditions appeared to be smaller than that under the 1 g conditions. Temperature signals were defined as 6 different types of states. The various temperature oscillatory state regimes were obtained on a ΔT−V/V_o plane under 1 g and μg conditions. Under μg conditions, in these experimental conditions, all temperature oscillatory states exhibited only the Periodic state.     

Characterization of Multiband Imager Aboard SELENE

The Multiband Imager (MI) is a high-resolution, multi-spectral imaging instrument for lunar exploration. It consists of two cameras, VIS and NIR, and is carried on the SELenological and ENgineering Explorer (SELENE), launched on Sep. 14, 2007. During the observation from January 2008 to June 2009, MI acquired about 450,000 scenes of multispectral image. The radiometric properties of the cameras were characterized using the pre-flight data derived in laboratory experiments with a calibrated integrating sphere. Twelve light source sets were used to examine the S/N ratio, linearity, and saturation level of the cameras. The dark field signal is quite stable in both cameras, having a noise level of less than 1 DN (VIS) and 2 DN (NIR). The fluctuation in the light field is also low (<2 DN), indicating that the spatial nonuniformity in the camera responses can be removed using a flat field. In order to remove the smear signals due to the frame transfer in the VIS data, we developed an iterate algorithm using all bands in the VIS camera. The S/N ratio, which is critical to the precision of the product, is estimated to exceed 160 for the VIS bands and 400 for the NIR bands under low illumination conditions (5% of lunar surface reflectance). Based on the S/N ratio, the radiometric error due to the noise is calculated to be less than 0.7% for VIS and 0.2% for NIR. The relationship between input and output of the VIS camera is linear with a residual of less than 0.6 DN, corresponding to a radiometric error of 0.3%. The NIR exhibits a non-linear response to the input radiance. A cubic function best fits the pre-flight data with an average residual of 8 DN (corresponds to an error of 0.8%). Validation using in-flight data indicated that the instability of the dark output has not changed, but the level of dark output has slightly changed in the NIR bands (less than 6 DN). The pixel-to-pixel sensitivity variation in the orbit has been changed from that in the pre-flight experiment. The difference between the in-flight data and the pre-flight data ranges within ±2%. There is also a small (less than ±1%) but nonnegligible difference between in-flight data of different cycles in both the VIS and NIR bands, suggesting that the coefficient for spatial ununiformity correction needs to be calculated for each cycle.