The Far Ultra-Violet Imager on the Icon Mission

ICON Far UltraViolet (FUV) imager contributes to the ICON science objectives by providing remote sensing measurements of the daytime and nighttime atmosphere/ionosphere. During sunlit atmospheric conditions, ICON FUV images the limb altitude profile in the shortwave (SW) band at 135.6 nm and the longwave (LW) band at 157 nm perpendicular to the satellite motion to retrieve the atmospheric O/N₂ ratio. In conditions of atmospheric darkness, ICON FUV measures the 135.6 nm recombination emission of \(\mathrm{O}^{+}\) ions used to compute the nighttime ionospheric altitude distribution. ICON Far UltraViolet (FUV) imager is a Czerny–Turner design Spectrographic Imager with two exit slits and corresponding back imager cameras that produce two independent images in separate wavelength bands on two detectors. All observations will be processed as limb altitude profiles. In addition, the ionospheric 135.6 nm data will be processed as longitude and latitude spatial maps to obtain images of ion distributions around regions of equatorial spread F. The ICON FUV optic axis is pointed 20 degrees below local horizontal and has a steering mirror that allows the field of view to be steered up to 30 degrees forward and aft, to keep the local magnetic meridian in the field of view. The detectors are micro channel plate (MCP) intensified FUV tubes with the phosphor fiber-optically coupled to Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs). The dual stack MCP-s amplify the photoelectron signals to overcome the CCD noise and the rapidly scanned frames are co-added to digitally create 12-second integrated images. Digital on-board signal processing is used to compensate for geometric distortion and satellite motion and to achieve data compression. The instrument was originally aligned in visible light by using a special grating and visible cameras. Final alignment, functional and environmental testing and calibration were performed in a large vacuum chamber with a UV source. The test and calibration program showed that ICON FUV meets its design requirements and is ready to be launched on the ICON spacecraft.     

德国机床工业的创新和趋势

机床是一个复杂的机电一体化系统.机床的创新离不开新结构、新材料、新的功能部件、新刀具和新的外围设备.加工工艺的发展以及加工过程的仿真和监控也日益受到重视.     

The Rosat mission

The primary scientific objective of the ROSAT mission is to perform the first all sky survey with an imaging X-ray telescope leading to an improvement in sensitivity by several orders of magnitude compared with previous surveys. Consequently a large number of new sources (> 10⁵) will be discovered and located with an accuracy of 1 arcmin. After completion of the survey which will take about half a year the instrument will be used for detailed observations of selected targets.The X-ray telescope consists of a fourfold nested Wolter type I mirror system with 80 cm aperture and 240 cm focal length, and three focal plane detectors. In the baseline version these will be imaging proportional counters (0.1 – 2 keV) providing a field of view of 2⁰ × 2⁰.     

TA15钛合金的动态热压缩行为及其机理研究

为了研究TA15(Ti-6Al-2Zr-1Mo-1V)钛合金的动态热变形行为,采用圆柱试样在Gleeble-1500热模拟机上进行了恒应变速率压缩变形试验(变形温度550~1000℃,变形速率0.01~1s-1),计算了材料的变形激活能Q并观察了热变形组织。结果表明,材料的流动应力随着变形温度的升高而降低,随应变速率的提高而增大。材料的流变行为表现为加工硬化(550~600℃)、动态再结晶(650~900℃)、动态回复(950~1000℃)三种类型。材料在(α+β)相区的热变形激活能为517kJ/mol,β相区为205kJ/mol。流动应力曲线、变形激活能以及变形组织分析表明,在α+β相区动态再结晶是材料的主要软化机制,而在β相区软化机制则以动态回复为主。随着变形速率的降低,在(α+β)双相区动态再结晶进行得更加充分,而在β相区则动态回复的亚晶趋于长大。     

Summary of quantitative interpretation of IMAGE far ultraviolet auroral data

Direct imaging of the magnetosphere by instruments on the IMAGE spacecraft is supplemented by simultaneous observations of the global aurora in three far ultraviolet (FUV) wavelength bands. The purpose of the multi-wavelength imaging is to study the global auroral particle and energy input from the magnetosphere into the atmosphere. This paper describes the method for quantitative interpretation of FUV measurements. The Wide-Band Imaging Camera (WIC) provides broad band ultraviolet images of the aurora with maximum spatial resolution by imaging the nitrogen lines and bands between 140 and 180 nm wavelength. The Spectrographic Imager (SI), a dual wavelength monochromatic instrument, images both Doppler-shifted Lyman-α emissions produced by precipitating protons, in the SI-12 channel and OI 135.6 nm emissions in the SI-13 channel. From the SI-12 Doppler shifted Lyman-α images it is possible to obtain the precipitating proton flux provided assumptions are made regarding the mean energy of the protons. Knowledge of the proton (flux and energy) component allows the calculation of the contribution produced by protons in the WIC and SI-13 instruments. Comparison of the corrected WIC and SI-13 signals provides a measure of the electron mean energy, which can then be used to determine the electron energy flux. To accomplish this, reliable emission modeling and instrument calibrations are required. In-flight calibration using early-type stars was used to validate the pre-flight laboratory calibrations and determine long-term trends in sensitivity. In general, very reasonable agreement is found between in-situ measurements and remote quantitative determinations.     

Far ultraviolet imaging from the IMAGE spacecraft. 2. Wideband FUV imaging

The Far Ultraviolet Wideband Imaging Camera (WIC) complements the magnetospheric images taken by the IMAGE satellite instruments with simultaneous global maps of the terrestrial aurora. Thus, a primary requirement of WIC is to image the total intensity of the aurora in wavelength regions most representative of the auroral source and least contaminated by dayglow, have sufficient field of view to cover the entire polar region from spacecraft apogee and have resolution that is sufficient to resolve auroras on a scale of 1 to 2 latitude degrees. The instrument is sensitive in the spectral region from 140–190 nm. The WIC is mounted on the rotating IMAGE spacecraft viewing radially outward and has a field of view of 17° in the direction parallel to the spacecraft spin axis. Its field of view is 30° in the direction perpendicular to the spin axis, although only a 17°×17° image of the Earth is recorded. The optics was an all-reflective, inverted Cassegrain Burch camera using concentric optics with a small convex primary and a large concave secondary mirror. The mirrors were coated by a special multi-layer coating, which has low reflectivity in the visible and near UV region. The detector consists of a MCP-intensified CCD. The MCP is curved to accommodate the focal surface of the concentric optics. The phosphor of the image intensifier is deposited on a concave fiberoptic window, which is then coupled to the CCD with a fiberoptic taper. The camera head operates in a fast frame transfer mode with the CCD being read approximately 30 full frames (512×256 pixel) per second with an exposure time of 0.033 s. The image motion due to the satellite spin is minimal during such a short exposure. Each image is electronically distortion corrected using the look up table scheme. An offset is added to each memory address that is proportional to the image shift due to satellite rotation, and the charge signal is digitally summed in memory. On orbit, approximately 300 frames will be added to produce one WIC image in memory. The advantage of the electronic motion compensation and distortion correction is that it is extremely flexible, permitting several kinds of corrections including motions parallel and perpendicular to the predicted axis of rotation. The instrument was calibrated by applying ultraviolet light through a vacuum monochromator and measuring the absolute responsivity of the instrument. To obtain the data for the distortion look up table, the camera was turned through various angles and the input angles corresponding to a pixel matrix were recorded. It was found that the spectral response peaked at 150 nm and fell off in either direction. The equivalent aperture of the camera, including mirror reflectivities and effective photocathode quantum efficiency, is about 0.04 cm². Thus, a 100 Rayleigh aurora is expected to produce 23 equivalent counts per pixel per 10 s exposure at the peak of instrument response.     

Far ultraviolet imaging from the IMAGE spacecraft. 3. Spectral imaging of Lyman-α and OI 135.6 nm

Two FUV Spectral imaging instruments, the Spectrographic Imager (SI) and the Geocorona Photometer (GEO) provide IMAGE with simultaneous global maps of the hydrogen (121.8 nm) and oxygen 135.6 nm components of the terrestrial aurora and with observations of the three dimensional distribution of neutral hydrogen in the magnetosphere (121.6 nm). The SI is a novel instrument type, in which spectral separation and imaging functions are independent of each other. In this instrument, two-dimensional images are produced on two detectors, and the images are spectrally filtered by a spectrograph part of the instrument. One of the two detectors images the Doppler-shifted Lyman- while rejecting the geocoronal `cold Ly-, and another detector images the OI 135.6 nm emission. The spectrograph is an all-reflective Wadsworth configuration in which a grill arrangement is used to block most of the cold, un-Doppler-shifted geocoronal emission at 121.567 nm. The SI calibration established that the upper limit of transmission at cold geocoronal Ly- is less than 2%. The measured light collecting efficiency was 0.01 and 0.008 cm² at 121.8 and at 135.6 nm, respectively. This is consistent with the size of the input aperture, the optical transmission, and the photocathode efficiency. The expected sensitivity is 1.8×10^–2 and 1.3×10^–2 counts per Rayleigh per pixel for each 5 s viewing exposure per satellite revolution (120 s). The measured spatial resolution is better than the 128×128 pixel matrix over the 15°×15° field of view in both wavelength channels. The SI detectors are photon counting devices using the cross delay line principle. In each detector a triple stack microchannel plate (MCP) amplifies the photo-electronic charge which is then deposited on a specially configured anode array. The position of the photon event is measured by digitizing the time delay between the pulses detected at each end of the anode structures. This scheme is intrinsically faster than systems that use charge division and it has a further advantage that it saturates more gradually at high count rates. The geocoronal Ly- is measured by a three-channel photometer system (GEO) which is a separate instrument. Each photometer has a built in MgF₂ lens to restrict the field of view to one degree and a ceramic electron multiplier with a KBr photocathode. One of the tubes is pointing radially outward perpendicular to the axis of satellite rotation. The optic of the other two subtend 60° with the rotation axis. These instruments take data continuously at 3 samples per second and rely on the combination of satellite rotation and orbital motion to scan the hydrogen cloud surrounding the earth. The detective efficiencies (effective quantum efficiency including windows) of the three tubes at Ly- are between 6 and 10%.     

The Plasma and Suprathermal Ion Composition (PLASTIC) Investigation on the STEREO Observatories

The Plasma and Suprathermal Ion Composition (PLASTIC) investigation provides the in situ solar wind and low energy heliospheric ion measurements for the NASA Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory Mission, which consists of two spacecraft (STEREO-A, STEREO-B). PLASTIC-A and PLASTIC-B are identical. Each PLASTIC is a time-of-flight/energy mass spectrometer designed to determine the elemental composition, ionic charge states, and bulk flow parameters of major solar wind ions in the mass range from hydrogen to iron. PLASTIC has nearly complete angular coverage in the ecliptic plane and an energy range from ～0.3 to 80 keV/e, from which the distribution functions of suprathermal ions, including those ions created in pick-up and local shock acceleration processes, are also provided.