301 research outputs found
GEO debris and interplanetary dust: fluxes and charging behavior
In September 1996, a dust/debris detector: GORID was launched into the
geostationary (GEO) region as a piggyback instrument on the Russian Express-2
telecommunications spacecraft. The instrument began its normal operation in
April 1997 and ended its mission in July 2002. The goal of this work was to use
GORID's particle data to identify and separate the space debris to
interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) in GEO, to more finely determine the
instrument's measurement characteristics and to derive impact fluxes. While the
physical characteristics of the GORID impacts alone are insufficient for a
reliable distinction between debris and interplanetary dust, the temporal
behavior of the impacts are strong enough indicators to separate the
populations based on clustering. Non-cluster events are predominantly
interplanetary, while cluster events are debris. The GORID mean flux
distributions (at mass thresholds which are impact speed dependent) for IDPs,
corrected for dead time, are 1.35x10^{-4} m^{-2} s^{-1} using a mean detection
rate: 0.54 d^{-1}, and for space debris are 6.1x10^{-4} m^{-2} s^{-1} using a
mean detection rate: 2.5 d^{-1}. Beta-meteoroids were not detected. Clusters
could be a closely-packed debris cloud or a particle breaking up due to
electrostatic fragmentation after high charging.Comment: * Comments: 6 pages, 4 postscript figures, in Dust in Planetary
Systems 2005, Krueger, H. and Graps, A. eds., ESA Publications, SP in press
(2006). For high resolution version, see:
http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/dustgroup/~graps/dips2005/GrapsetalDIPS2005.pd
Machine Learning and Data Analysis in Astroinformatics
Astroinformatics is a new discipline at the cross-road of astronomy, advanced statistics and computer science. With next generation sky surveys, space missions and modern instrumentation astronomy will enter the Petascale regime raising the demand for advanced computer science techniques with hard- and software solutions for data management, analysis, efficient automation and knowledge discovery. This tutorial reviews important developments in astroinformatics over the past years and discusses some relevant research questions and concrete problems. The contribution ends with a short review of the special session papers in these proceedings, as well as perspectives and challenges for the near future
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