The evaluation of a shuttle borne lidar experiment to measure the global distribution of aerosols and their effect on the atmospheric heat budget

A shuttle-borne lidar system is described, which will provide basic data about aerosol distributions for developing climatological models. Topics discussed include: (1) present knowledge of the physical characteristics of desert aerosols and the absorption characteristics of atmospheric gas, (2) radiative heating computations, and (3) general circulation models. The characteristics of a shuttle-borne radar are presented along with some laboratory studies which identify schemes that permit the implementation of a high spectral resolution lidar system

Preliminary Parallaxes of 40 L and T Dwarfs from the U.S. Naval Observatory Infrared Astrometry Program

We present preliminary trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions for 22 L dwarfs and 18 T dwarfs measured using the ASTROCAM infrared imager. Relative to absolute parallax corrections are made by employing 2MASS and/or SDSS photometry for reference frame stars. We combine USNO infrared and optical parallaxes with the best available CIT system photometry to determine M_J, M_H, and M_K values for 37 L dwarfs between spectral types L0 to L8 and 19 T dwarfs between spectral types T0.5 and T8 and present selected absolute magnitude versus spectral type and color diagrams, based on these results. Luminosities and temperatures are estimated for these objects. Of special interest are the distances of several objects which are at or near the L-T dwarf boundary so that this important transition can be better understood. The previously reported early-mid T dwarf luminosity excess is clearly confirmed and found to be present at J, H, and K. The large number of objects that populate this luminosity excess region indicates that it cannot be due entirely to selection effects. The T dwarf sequence is extended to M_J~16.9 by 2MASS J041519-0935 which, at d = 5.74 pc, is found to be the least luminous [log(L/L_sun)=-5.58] and coldest (T_eff~760 K) brown dwarf known. Combining results from this paper with earlier USNO CCD results we find that, in contrast to the L dwarfs, there are no examples of low velocity (V_tan < 20 km/s) T dwarfs. We briefly discuss future directions for the USNO infrared astrometry program.Comment: 73 pages, 9 figures, 9 tables, accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

New Models for a Triaxial Milky Way Spheroid and Effect on the Microlensing Optical Depth to the Large Magellanic Cloud

We obtain models for a triaxial Milky Way spheroid based on data by Newberg and Yanny. The best fits to the data occur for a spheroid center that is shifted by 3kpc from the Galactic Center. We investigate effects of the triaxiality on the microlensing optical depth to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The optical depth can be used to ascertain the number of Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs); a larger spheroid contribution would imply fewer Halo MACHOs. On the one hand, the triaxiality gives rise to more spheroid mass along the line of sight between us and the LMC and thus a larger optical depth. However, shifting the spheroid center leads to an effect that goes in the other direction: the best fit to the spheroid center is_away_ from the line of sight to the LMC. As a consequence, these two effects tend to cancel so that the change in optical depth due to the Newberg/Yanny triaxial halo is at most 50%. After subtracting the spheroid contribution in the four models we consider, the MACHO contribution (central value) to the mass of the Galactic Halo varies from \~(8-20)% if all excess lensing events observed by the MACHO collaboration are assumed to be due to MACHOs. Here the maximum is due to the original MACHO collaboration results and the minimum is consistent with 0% at the 1 sigma error level in the data.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures. v2: minor revisions. v3: expanded discussion of the local spheroid density and minor revisions to match version published in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP

An Analysis of the Shapes of Interstellar Extinction Curves. V. The IR-Through-UV Curve Morphology

We study the IR-through-UV interstellar extinction curves towards 328 Galactic B and late-O stars. We use a new technique which employs stellar atmosphere models in lieu of unreddened "standard" stars. This technique is capable of virtually eliminating spectral mismatch errors in the curves. It also allows a quantitative assessment of the errors and enables a rigorous testing of the significance of relationships between various curve parameters, regardless of whether their uncertainties are correlated. Analysis of the curves gives the following results: (1) In accord with our previous findings, the central position of the 2175 A extinction bump is mildly variable, its width is highly variable, and the two variations are unrelated. (2) Strong correlations are found among some extinction properties within the UV region, and within the IR region. (3) With the exception of a few curves with extreme (i.e., large) values of R(V), the UV and IR portions of Galactic extinction curves are not correlated with each other. (4) The large sightline-to-sightline variation seen in our sample implies that any average Galactic extinction curve will always reflect the biases of its parent sample. (5) The use of an average curve to deredden a spectral energy distribution (SED) will result in significant errors, and a realistic error budget for the dereddened SED must include the observed variance of Galactic curves. While the observed large sightline-to-sightline variations, and the lack of correlation among the various features of the curves, make it difficult to meaningfully characterize average extinction properties, they demonstrate that extinction curves respond sensitively to local conditions. Thus, each curve contains potentially unique information about the grains along its sightline.Comment: To appear in the Astrophysical Journal, Part 1, July 1, 2007. Figures and Tables which will appear only in the electronic version of the Journal can be obtained via anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.astronomy.villanova.edu . After logging in, change directories to "fitz/FMV_EXTINCTION". A README file describes the various files present in the director

Stellar Rotation in Young Clusters. II. Evolution of Stellar Rotation and Surface Helium Abundance

We derive the effective temperatures and gravities of 461 OB stars in 19 young clusters by fitting the H-gamma profile in their spectra. We use synthetic model profiles for rotating stars to develop a method to estimate the polar gravity for these stars, which we argue is a useful indicator of their evolutionary status. We combine these results with projected rotational velocity measurements obtained in a previous paper on these same open clusters. We find that the more massive B-stars experience a spin down as predicted by the theories for the evolution of rotating stars. Furthermore, we find that the members of binary stars also experience a marked spin down with advanced evolutionary state due to tidal interactions. We also derive non-LTE-corrected helium abundances for most of the sample by fitting the He I 4026, 4387, 4471 lines. A large number of helium peculiar stars are found among cooler stars with Teff < 23000 K. The analysis of the high mass stars (8.5 solar masses < M < 16 solar masses) shows that the helium enrichment process progresses through the main sequence (MS) phase and is greater among the faster rotators. This discovery supports the theoretical claim that rotationally induced internal mixing is the main cause of surface chemical anomalies that appear during the MS phase. The lower mass stars appear to have slower rotation rates among the low gravity objects, and they have a large proportion of helium peculiar stars. We suggest that both properties are due to their youth. The low gravity stars are probably pre-main sequence objects that will spin up as they contract. These young objects very likely host a remnant magnetic field from their natal cloud, and these strong fields sculpt out surface regions with unusual chemical abundances.Comment: 50 pages 18 figures, accepted by Ap

Kepler observations of variability in B-type stars

The analysis of the light curves of 48 B-type stars observed by Kepler is presented. Among these are 15 pulsating stars, all of which show low frequencies characteristic of SPB stars. Seven of these stars also show a few weak, isolated high frequencies and they could be considered as SPB/beta Cep hybrids. In all cases the frequency spectra are quite different from what is seen from ground-based observations. We suggest that this is because most of the low frequencies are modes of high degree which are predicted to be unstable in models of mid-B stars. We find that there are non-pulsating stars within the beta Cep and SPB instability strips. Apart from the pulsating stars, we can identify stars with frequency groupings similar to what is seen in Be stars but which are not Be stars. The origin of the groupings is not clear, but may be related to rotation. We find periodic variations in other stars which we attribute to proximity effects in binary systems or possibly rotational modulation. We find no evidence for pulsating stars between the cool edge of the SPB and the hot edge of the delta Sct instability strips. None of the stars show the broad features which can be attributed to stochastically-excited modes as recently proposed. Among our sample of B stars are two chemically peculiar stars, one of which is a HgMn star showing rotational modulation in the light curve.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, 4 table

A variational joint segmentation and registration framework for multimodal images

Image segmentation and registration are closely related image processing techniques and often required as simultaneous tasks. In this work, we introduce an optimization-based approach to a joint registration and segmentation model for multimodal images deformation. The model combines an active contour variational term with mutual information (MI) smoothing fitting term and solves in this way the difficulties of simultaneously performed segmentation and registration models for multimodal images. This combination takes into account the image structure boundaries and the movement of the objects, leading in this way to a robust dynamic scheme that links the object boundaries information that changes over time. Comparison of our model with state of art shows that our method leads to more consistent registrations and accurate results

Impact of Age and Diastolic Function on Novel, 4D flow CMR Biomarkers of Left Ventricular Blood Flow Kinetic Energy

Two-dimensional (2D) methods of assessing mitral inflow velocities are pre-load dependent, limiting their reliability for evaluating diastolic function. Left ventricular (LV) blood flow kinetic energy (KE) derived from four-dimensional flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (4D flow CMR) may offer improvements. It remains unclear whether 4D LV blood flow KE parameters are associated with physiological factors, such as age when compared to 2D mitral inflow velocities. Fifty-three healthy volunteers underwent standard CMR, plus 4D flow acquisition. LV blood flow KE parameters demonstrated good reproducibility with mean coefficient of variation of 6 ± 2% and an accuracy of 99% with a precision of 97%. The LV blood flow KEiEDV E/A ratio demonstrated good association to the 2D mitral inflow E/A ratio (r = 0.77, P < 0.01), with both decreasing progressively with advancing age (P < 0.01). Furthermore, peak E-wave KEiEDV and A-wave KEiEDV displayed a stronger association to age than the corresponding 2D metrics, peak E-wave and A-wave velocity (r = −0.51 vs −0.17 and r = 0.65 vs 0.46). Peak E-wave KEiEDV decreases whilst peak A-wave KEiEDV increases with advancing age. This study presents values for various LV blood flow KE parameters in health, as well as demonstrating that they show stronger and independent correlations to age than standard diastolic metrics