Stellar spectrophotometry in the far ultraviolet Final report, Jul. 1959 - Dec. 1963

Stellar spectrophotometry in vacuum ultraviolet - feasibility of ultraviolet spectrophotometric satellite, interference filter fabrication, vacuum calibration, and X-15 rocket aircraf

Measurement of Synchrotron x-ray energies and line shapes using diffraction markers

Standard reference markers for accurate, reproducible synchrotron x-ray energies are obtained using a three Si crystal spectrometer. The first two crystals are in the monochromator and the third is used to obtain diffraction markers which monitor the energy. Then for any value of the glancing angle on the reference Si crystal the energy for the (333) diffraction must occur at 3/4 that of the (444) and 3/5 of that for the (555). This establishes for the first time an absolute synchrotron energy scale. Higher-order diffractions are used to determine excitation line profiles. We conclude that the use of reference diffractions is necessary to measure reproducible x-ray energies and to analyze the incident photons\u27 line profile. The detection of diffractions near the edge of measurement and near the Cu edge will provide a fast secondary standard which will allow comparison of edge data between different laboratories. The diffraction profiles will allow the proper analysis of spectral line widths

An empirical temperature calibration for the Delta a photometric system. II. The A-type and mid F-type star

With the Delta a photometric system, it is possible to study very distant galactic and even extragalactic clusters with a high level of accuracy. This can be done with a classical color-magnitude diagram and appropriate isochrones. The new calibration presented in this paper is a powerful extension. For open clusters, the reddening is straightforward for an estimation via Isochrone fitting and is needed in order to calculate the reddening-free, temperature sensitive, index (g1-y)0. As a last step, the calibration can be applied to individual stars. Because no a-priori reddening-free photometric parameters are available for the investigated spectral range, we have applied the dereddening calibrations of the Stromgren uvbybeta system and compared them with extinction models for the Milky Way. As expected from the sample of bright stars, the extinction is negligible for almost all objects. As a next step, already established calibrations within the Stromgren uvbybeta, Geneva 7-color, and Johnson UBV systems were applied to a sample of 282 normal stars to derive a polynomial fit of the third degree for the averaged effective temperatures to the individual (g1-y)0 values with a mean of the error for the whole sample of Delta T(eff) is 134K, which is lower than the value in Paper I for hotter stars. No statistically significant effect of the rotational velocity on the precision of the calibration was found.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted by A&

The Spectral Signature of Dust Scattering and Polarization in the Near IR to Far UV. I. Optical Depth and Geometry Effects

Spectropolarimetry from the near IR to the far UV of light scattered by dust provides a valuable diagnostic of the dust composition, grain size distribution and spatial distribution. To facilitate the use of this diagnostic, we present detailed calculations of the intensity and polarization spectral signature of light scattered by optically thin and optically thick dust in various geometries. The polarized light radiative transfer calculations are carried out using the adding-doubling method for a plane-parallel slab, and are extended to an optically thick sphere by integrating over its surface. The calculations are for the Mathis, Rumple & Nordsieck Galactic dust model, and cover the range from 1 $\mu m$ to 500 \AA. We find that the wavelength dependence of the scattered light intensity provides a sensitive probe of the optical depth of the scattering medium, while the polarization wavelength dependence provides a probe of the grain scattering properties, which is practically independent of optical depth. We provide a detailed set of predictions, including polarization maps, which can be used to probe the properties of dust through imaging spectropolarimetry in the near IR to far UV of various Galactic and extragalactic objects. In a following paper we use the codes developed here to provide predictions for the dependence of the intensity and polarization on grain size distribution and composition.Comment: 29 pages + 21 figures, accepted for the Astrophysical Journal Supplement February 2000 issue. Some revision, mostly in the introduction and the conclusions, and a couple of correction

Women, know your limits: Cultural sexism in academia

Despite the considerable advances of the feminist movement across Western societies, in Universities women are less likely to be promoted, or paid as much as their male colleagues, or even get jobs in the first place. One way in which we can start to reflect on why this might be the case is through hearing the experiences of women academics themselves. Using feminist methodology, this article attempts to unpack and explore just some examples of ‘cultural sexism’ which characterise the working lives of many women in British academia.This article uses qualitative methods to describe and make sense of just some of those experiences. In so doing, the argument is also made that the activity of academia is profoundly gendered and this explicit acknowledgement may contribute to our understanding of the under-representation of women in senior positions

CASTRO: A New Compressible Astrophysical Solver. II. Gray Radiation Hydrodynamics

We describe the development of a flux-limited gray radiation solver for the compressible astrophysics code, CASTRO. CASTRO uses an Eulerian grid with block-structured adaptive mesh refinement based on a nested hierarchy of logically-rectangular variable-sized grids with simultaneous refinement in both space and time. The gray radiation solver is based on a mixed-frame formulation of radiation hydrodynamics. In our approach, the system is split into two parts, one part that couples the radiation and fluid in a hyperbolic subsystem, and another parabolic part that evolves radiation diffusion and source-sink terms. The hyperbolic subsystem is solved explicitly with a high-order Godunov scheme, whereas the parabolic part is solved implicitly with a first-order backward Euler method.Comment: accepted for publication in ApJS, high-resolution version available at https://ccse.lbl.gov/Publications/wqzhang/castro2.pd

Ductilidad del acero inoxidable bajo en níquel para estructuras de hormigón armado / Ductility in a new low nickel stainless steel for reinforced concrete

En este trabajo se presentan los diagramas tensióndeformación de un nuevo acero inoxidable con bajo contenido en níquel, un inoxidable convencional AISI 304 y un acero al carbono de uso común en estructuras de hormigón armado. Dicha ductilidad se ha estudiado determinando la tensión máxima (fmax), la tensión en el límite elástico (fy) y la deformación bajo carga máxima (εmax). Los tres materiales se han evaluado utilizando criterios aceptados internacionalmente, como son el índice p (capacidad de rotación plástica), el índice A* (área plástica de endurecimiento) y el índice de tenacidad Id (energía total absorbida en el punto de alargamiento bajo carga máxima), los resultados obtenidos se han comparado con los aceros convencionales de armaduras 500SD, 500N y 500H (EC-2)

The XMM-Newton serendipitous ultraviolet source survey catalogue

The XMM-Newton Serendipitous Ultraviolet Source Survey (XMM-SUSS) is a catalogue of ultraviolet (UV) sources detected serendipitously by the Optical Monitor (XMM-OM) on-board the XMM-Newton observatory. The catalogue contains ultraviolet-detected sources collected from 2,417 XMM-OM observations in 1-6 broad band UV and optical filters, made between 24 February 2000 and 29 March 2007. The primary contents of the catalogue are source positions, magnitudes and fluxes in 1 to 6 passbands, and these are accompanied by profile diagnostics and variability statistics. The XMM-SUSS is populated by 753,578 UV source detections above a 3 sigma signal-to-noise threshold limit which relate to 624,049 unique objects. Taking account of substantial overlaps between observations, the net sky area covered is 29-54 square degrees, depending on UV filter. The magnitude distributions peak at 20.2, 20.9 and 21.2 in UVW2, UVM2 and UVW1 respectively. More than 10 per cent of sources have been visited more than once using the same filter during XMM-Newton operation, and > 20 per cent of sources are observed more than once per filter during an individual visit. Consequently, the scope for science based on temporal source variability on timescales of hours to years is broad. By comparison with other astrophysical catalogues we test the accuracy of the source measurements and define the nature of the serendipitous UV XMM-OM source sample. The distributions of source colours in the UV and optical filters are shown together with the expected loci of stars and galaxies, and indicate that sources which are detected in multiple UV bands are predominantly star-forming galaxies and stars of type G or earlier.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Bolometric correction and spectral energy distribution of cool stars in Galactic clusters

We have investigated the relevant trend of the bolometric correction (BC) at the cool-temperature regime of red giant stars and its possible dependence on stellar metallicity. Our analysis relies on a wide sample of optical-infrared spectroscopic observations, along the 3500A-2.5micron wavelength range, for a grid of 92 red giant stars in five (3 globular + 2 open) Galactic clusters, along the -2.2<[Fe/H]<+0.4 metallicity range. Bolometric magnitudes have been found within an internal accuracy of a few percent. Making use of our new database, we provide a set of fitting functions for the V and K BC vs. Teff and broad-band colors, valid over the interval 3300K<Teff<5000K, especially suited for Red Giants. No evident drift of both BC(V) and BC(K) with [Fe/H] is found. Things may be different, however, for the B-band correction, given a clear (B-V) vs. [Fe/H] correlation in place for our data, with metal-poor stars displaying a "bluer" (B-V) with respect to the metal-rich sample, for fixed Teff. Our empirical bolometric scale supports the conclusion that (a) BC(K) from the most recent studies are reliable within <0.1 mag over the whole color/temperature range considered in this paper, and (b) the same conclusion apply to BC(V) only for stars warmer than ~3800K. At cooler temperatures the agreement is less general, and MARCS models are the only ones providing a satisfactory match to observations.Comment: 18 pages with 12 color figures and 12 tables. To appear in the MNRAS. Full spectral catalog of stars available at http://www.bo.astro.it/~eps/home.htm