2,617 research outputs found
Magnetic Accretion and Photopolarimetric Variability in Classical T Tauri Stars
We employ a Monte Carlo radiation transfer code to investigate the multi-
wavelength photopolarimetric variability arising from a spotted T Tauri star
surrounded by a dusty circumstellar disk. Our aim is to assess the ability of
the magnetic accretion model to explain the observed photopolarimetric
variability of classical T Tauri stars, and to identify potentially useful
observational diagnostics of T Tauri star/disk/spot parameters. We model a
range of spot sizes, spot latitudes, inner disk truncation radii, and system
inclination angles, as well as multiple disk and spot geometries. We find that
the amplitude, morphology, and wavelength dependence of the photopolarimetric
variability predicted by our models are generally consistent with existing
observations; a flared disk geometry is required to reproduce the largest
observed polarization levels and variations. Our models can further explain
stochastic polarimetric variability if unsteady accretion is invoked, in which
case irregular -- but correlated -- photometric variability is predicted, in
agreement with observations.
Potentially useful observational diagnostics of system parameters of interest
are discussed. We also investigate the reliability of modeling spot parameters
via analytic fits to multi-band photometric variations.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures To be published in ApJ, 1999, 51
Remote sensing of earth terrain
Abstracts from 46 refereed journal and conference papers are presented for research on remote sensing of earth terrain. The topics covered related to remote sensing include the following: mathematical models, vegetation cover, sea ice, finite difference theory, electromagnetic waves, polarimetry, neural networks, random media, synthetic aperture radar, electromagnetic bias, and others
Remote sensing of earth terrain
In remote sensing, the encountered geophysical media such as agricultural canopy, forest, snow, or ice are inhomogeneous and contain scatters in a random manner. Furthermore, weather conditions such as fog, mist, or snow cover can intervene the electromagnetic observation of the remotely sensed media. In the modelling of such media accounting for the weather effects, a multi-layer random medium model has been developed. The scattering effects of the random media are described by three-dimensional correlation functions with variances and correlation lengths corresponding to the fluctuation strengths and the physical geometry of the inhomogeneities, respectively. With proper consideration of the dyadic Green's function and its singularities, the strong fluctuation theory is used to calculate the effective permittivities which account for the modification of the wave speed and attenuation in the presence of the scatters. The distorted Born approximation is then applied to obtain the correlations of the scattered fields. From the correlation of the scattered field, calculated is the complete set of scattering coefficients for polarimetric radar observation or brightness temperature in passive radiometer applications. In the remote sensing of terrestrial ecosystems, the development of microwave remote sensing technology and the potential of SAR to measure vegetation structure and biomass have increased effort to conduct experimental and theoretical researches on the interactions between microwave and vegetation canopies. The overall objective is to develop inversion algorithms to retrieve biophysical parameters from radar data. In this perspective, theoretical models and experimental data are methodically interconnected in the following manner: Due to the complexity of the interactions involved, all theoretical models have limited domains of validity; the proposed solution is to use theoretical models, which is validated by experiments, to establish the region in which the radar response is most sensitive to the parameters of interest; theoretically simulated data will be used to generate simple invertible models over the region. For applications to the remote sensing of sea ice, the developed theoretical models need to be tested with experimental measurements. With measured ground truth such as ice thickness, temperature, salinity, and structure, input parameters to the theoretical models can be obtained to calculate the polarimetric scattering coefficients for radars or brightness temperature for radiometers and then compare theoretical results with experimental data. Validated models will play an important role in the interpretation and classification of ice in monitoring global ice cover from space borne remote sensors in the future. We present an inversion algorithm based on a recently developed inversion method referred to as the Renormalized Source-Type Integral Equation approach. The objective of this method is to overcome some of the limitations and difficulties of the iterative Born technique. It recasts the inversion, which is nonlinear in nature, in terms of the solution of a set of linear equations; however, the final inversion equation is still nonlinear. The derived inversion equation is an exact equation which sums up the iterative Neuman (or Born) series in a closed form and, thus, is a valid representation even in the case when the Born series diverges; hence, the name Renormalized Source-Type Integral Equation Approach
Polarimetry of Water Ice Particles Providing Insights on Grain Size and Degree of Sintering on Icy Planetary Surfaces
The polarimetry of the light scattered by planetary surfaces is a powerful
tool to provide constraints on their microstructure. To improve the
interpretation of polarimetric data from icy surfaces, we have developed the
POLarimeter for ICE Samples (POLICES) complementing the measurement facilities
of the Ice Laboratory at the University of Bern. The new setup uses a high
precision Stokes polarimeter to measure the degree of polarization in the
visible light scattered by surfaces at moderate phase angles (from 1.5 to
30{\deg}). We present the photometric and polarimetric phase curves measured on
various surfaces made of pure water ice particles having well-controlled size
and shape (spherical, crushed, frost). The results show how the amplitude and
the shape of the negative polarization branch change with the particles sizes
and the degree of metamorphism of the ice. We found that fresh frost formed by
water condensation on cold surfaces has a phase curve characterized by
resonances (Mie oscillations) indicating that frost embryos are transparent
micrometer-sized particles with a narrow size distribution and spherical shape.
Comparisons of these measurements with polarimetric observations of the icy
satellites of the Solar System suggest that Europa is possibly covered by
relatively coarser (~40-400 {\mu}m) and more sintered grains than Enceladus and
Rhea, more likely covered by frost-like particles of few micrometers in
average. The great sensitivity of polarization to grain size and degree of
sintering makes it an ideal tool to detect hints of ongoing processes on icy
planetary surfaces, such as cryovolcanism.Comment: 36 pages, 1 table, 11 figures, 2 data sets, accepted in Journal of
Geophysical Research: Planet
On the calibration of the relation between geometric albedo and polarimetric properties for the asteroids
We present a new extensive analysis of the old problem of finding a
satisfactory calibration of the relation between the geometric albedo and some
measurable polarization properties of the asteroids. To achieve our goals, we
use all polarimetric data at our disposal. For the purposes of calibration, we
use a limited sample of objects for which we can be confident to know the
albedo with good accuracy, according to previous investigations of other
authors. We find a new set of updated calibration coefficients for the
classical slope - albedo relation, but we generalize our analysis and we
consider also alternative possibilities, including the use of other
polarimetric parameters, one being proposed here for the first time, and the
possibility to exclude from best-fit analyzes the asteroids having low albedos.
We also consider a possible parabolic fit of the whole set of data.Comment: Accepted by MNRA
Polarimetry and photometry of the peculiar main-belt object 7968 = 133P/Elst-Pizarro
133P/Elst-Pizarro is an object that has been described as either an active
asteroid or a cometary object in the main asteroid belt. Here we present a
photometric and polarimetric study of this object in an attempt to infer
additional information about its origin.
With the FORS1 instrument of the ESO VLT, we have performed during the 2007
apparition of 133P/Elst-Pizarro quasi-simultaneous photometry and polarimetry
of its nucleus at nine epochs in the phase angle range 0 - 20 deg. For each
observing epoch, we also combined all available frames to obtain a deep image
of the object, to seek signatures of weak cometary activity. Polarimetric data
were analysed by means of a novel physical interference modelling.
The object brightness was found to be highly variable over timescales <1h, a
result fully consistent with previous studies. Using the albedo-polarization
relationships for asteroids and our photometric results, we found for our
target an albedo of about 0.06-0.07 and a mean radius of about 1.6 km.
Throughout the observing epochs, our deep imaging of the comet detects a tail
and an anti-tail. Their temporal variations are consistent with an activity
profile starting around mid May 2007 of minimum duration of four months. Our
images show marginal evidence of a coma around the nucleus. The overall light
scattering behaviour (photometry and polarimetry) resembles most closely that
of F-type asteroids.Comment: Accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysic
Aerosol Retrievals from Different Polarimeters During the ACEPOL Campaign Using a Common Retrieval Algorithm
In this paper, we present aerosol retrieval results from the ACEPOL (Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar) campaign, which was a joint initiative between NASA and SRON the Netherlands Institute for Space Research. The campaign took place in OctoberNovember 2017 over the western part of the United States. During ACEPOL six different instruments were deployed on the NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft, including four multi-angle polarimeters (MAPs): SPEX airborne, the Airborne Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP), the Airborne Multi-angle SpectroPolarimetric Imager (AirMSPI), and the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP). Also, two lidars participated: the High Spectral Resolution Lidar-2 (HSRL-2) and the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL). Flights were conducted mainly for scenes with low aerosol load over land, but some cases with higher AOD were also observed. We perform aerosol retrievals from SPEX airborne, RSP (410865 nm range only), and AirMSPI using the SRON aerosol retrieval algorithm and compare the results against AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) and HSRL-2 measurements (for SPEX airborne and RSP). All three MAPs compare well against AERONET for the aerosol optical depth (AOD), with a mean absolute error (MAE) between 0.014 and 0.024 at 440 nm. For the fine-mode effective radius the MAE ranges between 0.021 and 0.028 m. For the comparison with HSRL-2 we focus on a day with low AOD (0.020.14 at 532 nm) over the California Central Valley, Arizona, and Nevada (26 October) as well as a flight with high AOD (including measurements with AOD>1.0 at 532 nm) over a prescribed forest fire in Arizona (9 November). For the day with low AOD the MAEs in AOD (at 532 nm) with HSRL-2 are 0.014 and 0.022 for SPEX and RSP, respectively, showing the capability of MAPs to provide accurate AOD retrievals for the challenging case of low AOD over land. For the retrievals over the smoke plume a reasonable agreement in AOD between the MAPs and HSRL-2 was also found (MAE 0.088 and 0.079 for SPEX and RSP, respectively), despite the fact that the comparison is hampered by large spatial variability in AOD throughout the smoke plume. A good comparison is also found between the MAPs and HSRL-2 for the aerosol depolarization ratio (a measure of particle sphericity), with an MAE of 0.023 and 0.016 for SPEX and RSP, respectively. Finally, SPEX and RSP agree very well for the retrieved microphysical and optical properties of the smoke plume
The effect of the dust size distribution on asteroid polarization
We have developed a theoretical description of how of an asteroid's
polarization-phase curve will be affected by the removal of the dust from the
surface due to a size-dependent phenomenon such as radiation pressure-driven
escape of levitated particles. We test our calculations against new
observations of four small (D ~ 1 km) near-Earth asteroids [(85236), (142348),
(162900) and 2006 SZ_217] obtained with the Dual Beam Imaging Polarimeter on
the University of Hawaii's 2.2 m telescope, as well as previous observations of
(25143) Itokawa and (433) Eros. We find that the polarization of the light
reflected from an asteroid is controlled by the mineralogical and chemical
composition of the surface and is independent of dust particle. The relation
between the slope of the polarization-phase curve beyond the inversion angle
and the albedo of an asteroid is thus independent of the surface regolith size
distribution and is valid for both Main Belt and Near-Earth asteroids.Comment: accepted to A
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