9,572 research outputs found
Panoramic optical and near-infrared SETI instrument: optical and structural design concepts
We propose a novel instrument design to greatly expand the current optical
and near-infrared SETI search parameter space by monitoring the entire
observable sky during all observable time. This instrument is aimed to search
for technosignatures by means of detecting nano- to micro-second light pulses
that could have been emitted, for instance, for the purpose of interstellar
communications or energy transfer. We present an instrument conceptual design
based upon an assembly of 198 refracting 0.5-m telescopes tessellating two
geodesic domes. This design produces a regular layout of hexagonal collecting
apertures that optimizes the instrument footprint, aperture diameter,
instrument sensitivity and total field-of-view coverage. We also present the
optical performance of some Fresnel lenses envisaged to develop a dedicated
panoramic SETI (PANOSETI) observatory that will dramatically increase sky-area
searched (pi steradians per dome), wavelength range covered, number of stellar
systems observed, interstellar space examined and duration of time monitored
with respect to previous optical and near-infrared technosignature finders.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 3 table
Operations of and Future Plans for the Pierre Auger Observatory
Technical reports on operations and features of the Pierre Auger Observatory,
including ongoing and planned enhancements and the status of the future
northern hemisphere portion of the Observatory. Contributions to the 31st
International Cosmic Ray Conference, Lodz, Poland, July 2009.Comment: Contributions to the 31st ICRC, Lodz, Poland, July 200
Recommended from our members
Design, characterization, and fabrication of solar-retroreflective cool-wall materials
Raising urban albedo increases the fraction of incident sunlight returned to outer space, cooling cities and their buildings. We evaluated the angular distribution of solar radiation incident on exterior walls in 17 U S. climates to develop performance parameters for solar-retroreflective walls, then applied first-principle physics and ray-tracing simulations to explore designs. Our analysis indicates that retroreflective walls must function at large incidence angles to reflect a substantial portion of summer sunlight, and that this will be difficult to attain with materials that rely on total internal reflection. Gonio-spectrophotometer measurements of the solar spectral bi-directional reflectivity of a bicycle reflector showed little to no retroreflection at large incidence angles. Visual comparisons of retroreflection to specular first-surface reflection for four different retroreflective safety films using violet and green lasers suggest their retroreflection to be no greater than 0.09 at incidence angles up to 45°, and no greater than 0.30 at incidence angles of up to 70°. Attempts to produce a two-surface retroreflector with orthogonal mirror grooves by cutting and polishing an aluminum block indicate that residual surface roughness impedes retroreflection. Ongoing efforts focus on forming orthogonal surfaces with aluminized Mylar film, a material with very high specular reflectance across the solar spectrum. We investigated (1) folding or stamping a free film; (2) adhering the film to a pre-shaped substrate; or (3) attaching the film to a flat ductile substrate, then shaping. The latter two methods were more successful but yielded imperfect right angles
Online Correction of Dispersion Error in 2D Waveguide Meshes
An elastic ideal 2D propagation medium, i.e., a membrane, can be simulated by
models discretizing the wave equation on the time-space grid (finite difference
methods), or locally discretizing the solution of the wave equation (waveguide
meshes). The two approaches provide equivalent computational structures, and
introduce numerical dispersion that induces a misalignment of the modes from
their theoretical positions. Prior literature shows that dispersion can be
arbitrarily reduced by oversizing and oversampling the mesh, or by adpting
offline warping techniques. In this paper we propose to reduce numerical
dispersion by embedding warping elements, i.e., properly tuned allpass filters,
in the structure. The resulting model exhibits a significant reduction in
dispersion, and requires less computational resources than a regular mesh
structure having comparable accuracy.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the International
Computer Music Conference, 2000. Corrected first referenc
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