Pilot-booster control valve

Two-stage, pressure-sensing control valve is designed for servocontrol of 10-inch main tank valve regulating pressure of liquid oxygen in tank and serving to vent tank during filling. Valve uses a negative-rate Belleville spring to cancel positive spring rates of bellows and coil springs

Temperature Fluctuations as a Source of Brown Dwarf Variability

A number of brown dwarfs are now known to be variable with observed amplitudes as large as 10-30% at some wavelengths. While spatial inhomogeneities in cloud coverage and thickness are likely responsible for much of the observed variability, it is possible that some of the variations arise from atmospheric temperature fluctuations instead of, or in addition to, clouds. To better understand the role that thermal variability might play we present a case study of brown dwarf variability using a newly-developed one-dimensional, time-stepping model of atmospheric thermal structure. We focus on the effects of thermal perturbations, intentionally simplifying the problem through omission of clouds and atmospheric circulation. Model results demonstrate that thermal perturbations occurring deep in the atmosphere (at pressures greater than 10 bar) of a model T-dwarf can be communicated to the upper atmosphere through radiative heating via the windows in near-infrared water opacity. The response time depends on where in the atmosphere a thermal perturbation is introduced. We show that, for certain periodic perturbations, the emission spectrum can have complex, time- and wavelength-dependent behaviors, including phase shifts in times of maximum flux observed at different wavelengths. Since different wavelengths probe different levels in the atmosphere, these variations track a wavelength-dependent set of radiative exchanges happening between different atmospheric levels as a perturbation evolves in time. We conclude that thermal--as well as cloud--fluctuations must be considered as possible contributors to the observed brown dwarf variability.Comment: updated reference & DOI; some movies of results available at https://sites.google.com/site/tdrobinsonscience/science/brown-dwarf

Model Bond albedos of extrasolar giant planets

The atmospheres of extrasolar giant planets are modeled with various effective temperatures and gravities, with and without clouds. Bond albedos are computed by calculating the ratio of the flux reflected by a planet (integrated over wavelength) to the total stellar flux incident on the planet. This quantity is useful for estimating the effective temperature and evolution of a planet. We find it is sensitive to the stellar type of the primary. For a 5 M_Jup planet the Bond albedo varies from 0.4 to 0.3 to 0.06 as the primary star varies from A5V to G2V to M2V in spectral type. It is relatively insensitive to the effective temperature and gravity for cloud--free planets. Water clouds increase the reflectivity of the planet in the red, which increases the Bond albedo. The Bond albedo increases by an order of magnitude for a 13 M_Jup planet with an M2V primary when water clouds are present. Silicate clouds, on the other hand, can either increase or decrease the Bond albedo, depending on whether there are many small grains (the former) or few large grains (the latter).Comment: 6 pages, 9 figures, uses egs.cls and epsfig.sty, submitted to Physics and Chemistry of the Earth (proceedings of the April 1998 EGS meeting in Nice, France

Titan solar occultation observations reveal transit spectra of a hazy world

High altitude clouds and hazes are integral to understanding exoplanet observations, and are proposed to explain observed featureless transit spectra. However, it is difficult to make inferences from these data because of the need to disentangle effects of gas absorption from haze extinction. Here, we turn to the quintessential hazy world -- Titan -- to clarify how high altitude hazes influence transit spectra. We use solar occultation observations of Titan's atmosphere from the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft to generate transit spectra. Data span 0.88-5 microns at a resolution of 12-18 nm, with uncertainties typically smaller than 1%. Our approach exploits symmetry between occultations and transits, producing transit radius spectra that inherently include the effects of haze multiple scattering, refraction, and gas absorption. We use a simple model of haze extinction to explore how Titan's haze affects its transit spectrum. Our spectra show strong methane absorption features, and weaker features due to other gases. Most importantly, the data demonstrate that high altitude hazes can severely limit the atmospheric depths probed by transit spectra, bounding observations to pressures smaller than 0.1-10 mbar, depending on wavelength. Unlike the usual assumption made when modeling and interpreting transit observations of potentially hazy worlds, the slope set by haze in our spectra is not flat, and creates a variation in transit height whose magnitude is comparable to those from the strongest gaseous absorption features. These findings have important consequences for interpreting future exoplanet observations, including those from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.Comment: Updated journal reference; data available via http://sites.google.com/site/tdrobinsonscience/science/tita