A survey of the outer planets Jupiter,Saturn, Uranus,Neptune, Pluto,and their satellites

A survey of current knowledge about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and their satellites is presented. The best available numerical values are given for physical parameters, including orbital and body properties, atmospheric composition and structure, and photometric parameters. The more acceptable current theories of these bodies are outlined with thorough referencing offering access to the details. The survey attempts to cover the literature through May 1, 1972. Prepared Under Contract No. NAS7-100 National Aeronautics and Space Administration.     

Adaptive cancellation method for geometry-induced nonstationary bistatic clutter environments

This paper describes and characterizes a new bistatic space-time adaptive processing (STAP) clutter mitigation method. The approach involves estimating and compensating aspects of the spatially varying bistatic clutter response in both angle and Doppler prior to adaptive clutter suppression. An important feature of the proposed method is its ability to extract requisite implementation information from the data itself, rather than rely on ancillary - and possibly erroneous or missing - system measurements. We justify the essence of the proposed method by showing its ability to align the dominant clutter subspaces of each range realization relative to a suitably chosen reference point as a means of homogenizing the space-time data set. Moreover, we numerically characterize performance using synthetic bistatic clutter data. For the examples considered herein, the proposed bistatic STAP method leads to maximum performance improvements between 17.25 dB and 20.75 dB relative to traditional STAP application, with average improvements of 6 dB to 10 dB.     

The Solar Chemical Composition

We present our current knowledge of the solar chemical composition based on the recent significant downward revision of the solar photospheric abundances of the most abundant metals. These new solar abundances result from the use of a 3D hydrodynamic model of the solar atmosphere instead of the classical 1D hydrostatic models, accounting for departures from LTE, and improved atomic and molecular data. With these abundances, the new solar metallicity, Z, decreases to Z=0.012, almost a factor of two lower than earlier widely used values. We compare our values with data from other sources and analyse a number of impacts of these new photospheric abundances. While resolving a number of longstanding problems, the new 3D-based solar photospheric composition also poses serious challenges for the standard solar model as judged by helioseismology.     

Search radar detection and track with the Hough transform. II.detection statistics

For pt.I see ibid., vol.30, no.1, (Jan.1994). This paper describes the calculation of P_F and P_D for the Hough transform technique when the primary threshold crossings are weighted by their power before transforming (i.e., noncoherent integration). After expressions for P_F and P_D are derived, we examine the question of optimal granularity of the Hough accumulator space. We also investigate the relationship between primary and secondary thresholds and its effect on detectability     

EUV spectroscopy as a plasma diagnostic

The EUV wavelength regions is rich in emission lines from the transition region and the corona. Spectroscopic techniques have been used extensively to determine the physical conditions in the solar atmosphere for such diverse phenomena as coronal holes, active regions, sunspots, flares, etc. The diagnostics and dynamics of plasmas, both homogeneous and inhomogeneous plasmas, are reviewed. The future projects such as the CDS and SUMER instruments on SOHO have been discussed as they cover EUV wavelength region and will provide a wealth of observational data with excellent spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution.     

The problem with aviation COTS

Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) has become a byword for acquisition reform, but there are significant risks associated with the use of COTS products in military systems. These risks are especially acute for aviation systems. This paper explains how COTS can negatively affect military acquisitions and gives ideas on how to plan and resolve COTS caused problems     

Analysis of single-platform passive emitter location with terraindata

Frequency measurements made at a moving platform can be used to locate an emitter. An error ellipsoid analysis is used to compare the performance under three levels of a priori information on the emitter's altitude: (1) no knowledge, (2) terrain data, and (3) complete knowledge of the emitter's altitude. The analysis is performed for two simple platform paths that provide frequency measurements that are approximately time reversed versions of one another. When no a priori knowledge is available there is little difference between the performance when the platform maneuvers on a concave circular path or on a convex circular path and the performance depends very Little on the platform altitude. However, when some a priori altitude information is available the performance is markedly different on the two paths and is highly dependent on the platform altitude. Thus, this analysis provides the unexpected result that for seemingly similar platform paths, the performance can vary markedly when the emitter altitude is assumed known. Also, an interesting result is that for some cases it is possible to achieve better x-y accuracy when using terrain data than when the emitter's z location is known, because the terrain data provides terrain slope information. These cases are characterized in terms of the terrain slope at the emitter