HIRDES – The High-Resolution Double-Echelle Spectrograph for the World Space Observatory Ultraviolet (WSO/UV)

The World Space Observatory Ultraviolet (WSO/UV) is a multi-national project grown out of the needs of the astronomical community to have future access to the UV range. WSO/UV consists of a single UV telescope with a primary mirror of 1.7 m diameter feeding the UV spectrometer and UV imagers. The spectrometer comprises three different spectrographs, two high-resolution echelle spectrographs (the High-Resolution Double-Echelle Spectrograph, HIRDES) and a low-dispersion long-slit instrument. Within HIRDES the 102–310 nm spectral band is split to feed two echelle spectrographs covering the UV range 174–310 nm and the vacuum-UV range 102–176 nm with high spectral resolution (R > 50,000). The technical concept is based on the heritage of two previous ORFEUS SPAS missions. The phase-B1 development activities are described in this paper considering performance aspects, design drivers, related trade-offs (mechanical concepts, material selection etc.) and a critical functional and environmental test verification approach. The current state of other WSO/UV scientific instruments (imagers) is also described.     

Solar signals in the minimum extreme temperature records in the southern region of the Gulf of Mexico

Minimum extreme temperature series from several meteorological stations of the Gulf of Mexico are spectrally analyzed using the Maximum Entropy Method.We obtained significant periodicities similar to those found in meteorological and solar activity phenomena. This indicates that probably the solar activity signals are present in the minimum extreme temperature records of this Mexican region.     

High resolution science with high redshift galaxies

We summarize the high-resolution science that has been done on high redshift galaxies with Adaptive Optics (AO) on the world’s largest ground-based facilities and with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). These facilities complement each other. Ground-based AO provides better light gathering power and in principle better resolution than HST, giving it the edge in high spatial resolution imaging and high resolution spectroscopy. HST produces higher quality, more stable PSF’s over larger field-of-views in a much darker sky-background than ground-based AO, and yields deeper wide-field images and low-resolution spectra than the ground. Faint galaxies have steadily decreasing sizes at fainter fluxes and higher redshifts, reflecting the hierarchical formation of galaxies over cosmic time. HST has imaged this process in great structural detail to z  6, and ground-based AO and spectroscopy has provided measurements of their masses and other physical properties with cosmic time. Last, we review how the 6.5 m James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will measure First Light, reionization, and galaxy assembly in the near–mid-IR after 2013.     

Relation between galactic and solar cosmic radiation at aviation altitude

Cosmic radiation bombards us at high altitude with ionizing particles; the radiation has a galactic component, which is normally dominant, and a component of solar origin. Cosmic ray particles are the primary source of ionization in the atmosphere above 1 km; below 1 km radon is a dominant source of ionization in many areas.     

Discovery of a new chert-permineralized microbiota in the Proterozoic Buxa Formation of the Ranjit window, Sikkim, northeast India, and its astrobiological implications

For the foreseeable future, the search for evidence of past life in rocks acquired from other planets will be constrained by the amount of sample available and by the fidelity of preservation of any fossils present. What amount of rock is needed to establish the existence of past life? To address this question, we studied a minute amount of rock collected from cherty dolomites of the Proterozoic Buxa Formation in the metamorphically altered tectonically active northeastern Himalaya. In particular, we investigated 2 small petrographic thin sections-one from each of 2 bedded chert horizons exposed in the Ranjit River stratigraphic section northwest of Rishi, Sikkim, India-that together comprise an area of approximately 5 cm(2) (about the size of a US postage stamp) and have a total rock weight of approximately 0.1 g. Optical microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy and imagery demonstrate that each of the thin sections contains a rich assemblage of 3-dimensionally permineralized organic-walled microfossils. This study, the first report of Proterozoic microfossils in units of the Ranjit tectonic window, demonstrates that firm evidence of early life can be adduced from even a minuscule amount of fossil-bearing ancient rock.     

The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) experiment for NASA's 2009 Mars Science Laboratory

We present a summary of the physical principles and design of the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument onboard NASA's 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. The DAN instrument will use the method of neutron-neutron activation analysis in a space application to study the abundance and depth distribution of water in the martian subsurface along the path of the MSL rover.     

Planetary rings as relics of plasma pre-rings

A possibility is discussed that the rings of large planets observed in the modern epoch are relics of some pre-rings consisting of magnetized plasma (according to a hypothesis by H. Alfven). The solution to a model problem published in [36, 37] is used. Its main result is a mechanism of stratification of an evolutionally mature plasma pre-ring into a large number of narrow elite rings separated by anti-rings (gaps). Another result is the theoretical substantiation of the presence in the near-planetary space of a region of existence and stability (in what follows it is referred to as ES-region) of plasma rings. The data obtained in the course of the Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini missions are used below for verification of the model on which the solutions presented in [36, 37] are based.     

Study of the Enhancement Events of Relativistic Electron at the Geosynchronous Orbit

The high flux of energetic electron on geostationary orbit can induce many kinds of malfunction of the satellite there, within which the bulk-charging is the most significant that several broadcast satellite failures were confirmed to be due to this effect. The electron flux on geostationary orbit varies in a large range even up to three orders accompanied the passage of interplanetary magnetic cloud and the following geomagnetic disturbances. Upon the investigation of electron flux enhancement events, two types of events were partitioned as recurrent events and random ones. Both of the two kinds of events relate to the interplanetary conditions such as solar wind parameters, IMF etc and their evolution characters as well. As for the recurrent events, we found that, (1) all of the events exhibits periodic recurrence about 27 days, (2) significant increase of electron flux relates to interplanetary index and characters of their distribution, (3) the electron flux also has relation to solar activity index. An artificial neural network was constructed to estimate the flux I day ahead. The random electron flux enhancement events are rare and present different distribution figures to the recurrent ones. The figure of the random events and the conditions of their occurrence is also discussed in this paper.      

Radio plasma imager simulations and measurements

The Radio Plasma Imager (RPI) will be the first-of-its kind instrument designed to use radio wave sounding techniques to perform repetitive remote sensing measurements of electron number density (N _e) structures and the dynamics of the magnetosphere and plasmasphere. RPI will fly on the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) mission to be launched early in the year 2000. The design of the RPI is based on recent advances in radio transmitter and receiver design and modern digital processing techniques perfected for ground-based ionospheric sounding over the last two decades. Free-space electromagnetic waves transmitted by the RPI located in the low-density magnetospheric cavity will be reflected at distant plasma cutoffs. The location and characteristics of the plasma at those remote reflection points can then be derived from measurements of the echo amplitude, phase, delay time, frequency, polarization, Doppler shift, and echo direction. The 500 m tip-to-tip X and Y (spin plane) antennas and 20 m Z axis antenna on RPI will be used to measures echoes coming from distances of several R _E. RPI will operate at frequencies between 3 kHz to 3 MHz and will provide quantitative N _e values from 10^–1 to 10⁵ cm^–3. Ray tracing calculations, combined with specific radio imager instrument characteristics, enables simulations of RPI measurements. These simulations have been performed throughout an IMAGE orbit and under different model magnetospheric conditions. They dramatically show that radio sounding can be used quite successfully to measure a wealth of magnetospheric phenomena such as magnetopause boundary motions and plasmapause dynamics. The radio imaging technique will provide a truly exciting opportunity to study global magnetospheric dynamics in a way that was never before possible.     

The Radio Plasma Imager investigation on the IMAGE spacecraft

Radio plasma imaging uses total reflection of electromagnetic waves from plasmas whose plasma frequencies equal the radio sounding frequency and whose electron density gradients are parallel to the wave normals. The Radio Plasma Imager (RPI) has two orthogonal 500-m long dipole antennas in the spin plane for near omni-directional transmission. The third antenna is a 20-m dipole along the spin axis. Echoes from the magnetopause, plasmasphere and cusp will be received with the three orthogonal antennas, allowing the determination of their angle-of-arrival. Thus it will be possible to create image fragments of the reflecting density structures. The instrument can execute a large variety of programmable measuring options at frequencies between 3 kHz and 3 MHz. Tuning of the transmit antennas provides optimum power transfer from the 10 W transmitter to the antennas. The instrument can operate in three active sounding modes: (1) remote sounding to probe magnetospheric boundaries, (2) local (relaxation) sounding to probe the local plasma frequency and scalar magnetic field, and (3) whistler stimulation sounding. In addition, there is a passive mode to record natural emissions, and to determine the local electron density, the scalar magnetic field, and temperature by using a thermal noise spectroscopy technique.