D0 Solenoid Upgrade Project: Solenoid Insulatiing Vacuum Vessels; Relief Path Capacity Calculation

This engineering note documents the calculations done to determine the relief capacity of the solenoid vacuum pumping line. The calculations were done by David Bell, a co-op student from the University of Wisconsin. The calculations are attached. The conclusion is that the vacuum pumping line has a venting capacity of 129 g/s warm helium or 298 g/s warm nitrogen. Both of these capacities are much larger than the expected operating mass flow rates of the liquid helium (5 to 15 g/s) or liquid nitrogen (2 or 3 g/s) circuits. The calculations assume the solenoid vacuum vessel is at 3 psig and the relief plate is set at 1.5 psig. Additional calculations were done to prove that the venting capacity of the vacuum pumping line exceeded flowrates due to a failure mode. These calculations are attached. Since the system is not finalized, (pipe sizes not determined, components sized...) the calculations were done by first picking reasonable line sizes based on known allowed pressure drops in the system and then doing a maximum delivery rate calculation if a line was completely severed in the vacuum space of the solenoid/control dewar. The numbers from these calculations say that failure mode flow rates are 80 g/s liquid helium or 80 g/s liquid nitrogen. Both these values are less than the capacity of the relief line. In the five months since the (12/92 Dave Bell) calculations were done, some changes occured to the relief path. The most notable is that the radiation shield is now considered to be 6.625-inch O.D. instead of 6.00-inch used in the venting calculation. This change would tend to lower the capacity numbers. Another change was that for about half the venting path the chimney vacuum shell size was increased to 10-inch pipe. This change tends to increase the capacity numbers which were done assuming 8-inch pipe. These changes taken together probably offset each other or make the capacity numbers better. In either case, since the margin of safety is large, the calculations have not been redone

Luminosity function of contact binaries at high galactic latitudes towards the LMC and the SMC

Using the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) catalogue of eclipsing binaries, 15 contact binaries were identified towards the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Large Magellanic Cloud at vertical distances from the Galactic plane between 300 pc and 10 kpc. Based on the luminosity function calculated for these contact binaries, we estimated a frequency of occurrence relative to Main Sequence stars in the thick disc at roughly . This estimate suffers from the small number statistics, but is consistent with the value previously found for the solar neighbourhoo

1318 New Variable Stars in a 0.25 Square Degree Region of the Galactic Plane

We have conducted a deep photometric survey of a 0.5 deg x 0.5 deg area of the Galactic Plane using the WFI instrument on the 2.2-m ESO telescope on La Silla, Chile. The dataset comprises a total of 267 R-band images, 204 from a 16 day observation run in 2005, supplemented by 63 images from a six week period in 2002. Our reduction employed the new numerical kernel difference image analysis method as implemented in the PYSIS3 code and resulted in more than 500,000 lightcurves of stars down to a magnitude limit of R ~ 24.5. A search for variable stars resulted in the detection of 1318 variables of different types. 1011 of these are eclipsing or contact binary stars. A number of the contact binaries have low mass-ratios and several of the detached binaries appear to have low-mass components. Three candidate contact binaries have periods at the known cut off including two with periods lower than any previously published. Also identified are 3 possible pre-main sequence detached eclipsing binaries.Comment: 54 pages, 17 figures, 11 tables, accepted by A&A. Photometry will be available through CD

TT Arietis - Observations of a Cataclysmic Variable Star with the MOST Space Telescope

We measured the photometric flux of the cataclysmic variable TT Arietis (BD+14 341) using the MOST space telescope. Periodic oscillations of the flux reveal the orbital period as well as other features of this binary system. We applied a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) on a reduced dataset to retrieve the frequencies of TT Arietis. The analysis of the system revealed a photometric period of 3.19 hours. Though the MOST data has a high cadence of 52.8 seconds, a fine structure of the accretion disk is not obvious.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, JENAM 2008 proceeding

VW LMi: tightest quadruple system known. Light-time effect and possible secular changes of orbits

Tightest known quadruple systems VW LMi consists of contact eclipsing binary with P_12 = 0.477551 days and detached binary with P_34 = 7.93063 days revolving in rather tight, 355.0-days orbit. This paper presents new photometric and spectroscopic observations yielding 69 times of minima and 36 disentangled radial velocities for the component stars. All available radial velocities and minima times are combined to better characterize the orbits and to derive absolute parameters of components. The total mass of the quadruple system was estimated at 4.56 M_sun. The detached, non-eclipsing binary with orbital period P = 7.93 days is found to show apsidal motion with U approximately 80 years. Precession period in this binary, caused by the gravitational perturbation of the contact binary, is estimated to be about 120 years. The wide mutual orbit and orbit of the non-eclipsing pair are found to be close to coplanarity, preventing any changes of the inclination angle of the non-eclipsing orbit and excluding occurrence of the second system of eclipses in future. Possibilities of astrometric solution and direct resolving of the wide, mutual orbit are discussed. Nearby star, HD95606, was found to form loose binary with quadruple system VW LMi.Comment: 4 figures. accepted to MNRAS on July 31, 200

Reduction of time-resolved space-based CCD photometry developed for MOST Fabry Imaging data

The MOST (Microvariability & Oscillations of STars) satellite obtains ultraprecise photometry from space with high sampling rates and duty cycles. Astronomical photometry or imaging missions in low Earth orbits, like MOST, are especially sensitive to scattered light from Earthshine, and all these missions have a common need to extract target information from voluminous data cubes. They consist of upwards of hundreds of thousands of two-dimensional CCD frames (or sub-rasters) containing from hundreds to millions of pixels each, where the target information, superposed on background and instrumental effects, is contained only in a subset of pixels (Fabry Images, defocussed images, mini-spectra). We describe a novel reduction technique for such data cubes: resolving linear correlations of target and background pixel intensities. This stepwise multiple linear regression removes only those target variations which are also detected in the background. The advantage of regression analysis versus background subtraction is the appropriate scaling, taking into account that the amount of contamination may differ from pixel to pixel. The multivariate solution for all pairs of target/background pixels is minimally invasive of the raw photometry while being very effective in reducing contamination due to, e.g., stray light. The technique is tested and demonstrated with both simulated oscillation signals and real MOST photometry.Comment: 16 pages, 23 figure

UV excess measures of accretion onto young very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs

Low-resolution spectra from 3000-9000 AA of young low-mass stars and brown dwarfs were obtained with LRIS on Keck I. The excess UV and optical emission arising in the Balmer and Paschen continua yields mass accretion rates ranging from 2e-12 to 1e-8 Mo/yr. These results are compared with {\it HST}/STIS spectra of roughly solar-mass accretors with accretion rates that range from 2e-10 to 5e-8 Mo/yr. The weak photospheric emission from M-dwarfs at <4000 A leads to a higher contrast between the accretion and photospheric emission relative to higher-mass counterparts. The mass accretion rates measured here are systematically 4-7 times larger than those from H-alpha emission line profiles, with a difference that is consistent with but unlikely to be explained by the uncertainty in both methods. The accretion luminosity correlates well with many line luminosities, including high Balmer and many He I lines. Correlations of the accretion rate with H-alpha 10% width and line fluxes show a large amount of scatter. Our results and previous accretion rate measurements suggest that accretion rate is proportional to M^(1.87+/-0.26) for accretors in the Taurus Molecular Cloud.Comment: 13 pages text, 15 tables, 14 figures. Accepted by Ap

Planets in Stellar Clusters Extensive Search. I. Discovery of 47 Low-amplitude Variables in the Metal-rich Cluster NGC 6791 with Millimagnitude Image Subtraction Photometry

We have undertaken a long-term project, Planets in Stellar Clusters Extensive Search (PISCES), to search for transiting planets in open clusters. As our first target we have chosen NGC 6791 -- a very old, populous, metal rich cluster. In this paper we present the results of a test observing run at the FLWO 1.2 m telescope. Our primary goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of obtaining the accuracy required for planetary transit detection using image subtraction photometry on data collected with a 1 m class telescope. We present a catalog of 62 variable stars, 47 of them newly discovered, most with low amplitude variability. Among those there are several BY Dra type variables. We have also observed outbursts in the cataclysmic variables B7 and B8 (Kaluzny et al. 1997).Comment: 15 pages LaTeX, including 8 PostScript figures and 3 tables. More discussion added on the implications for transit detection. Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. Version with full resolution figures available through ftp at ftp://cfa-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/bmochejs/PISCES/papers/1_N6791