978 research outputs found
Theory and simulation of spectral line broadening by exoplanetary atmospheric haze
Atmospheric haze is the leading candidate for the flattening of expolanetary
spectra, as it's also an important source of opacity in the atmospheres of
solar system planets, satellites, and comets. Exoplanetary transmission
spectra, which carry information about how the planetary atmospheres become
opaque to stellar light in transit, show broad featureless absorption in the
region of wavelengths corresponding to spectral lines of sodium, potassium and
water. We develop a detailed atomistic model, describing interactions of atomic
or molecular radiators with dust and atmospheric haze particulates. This model
incorporates a realistic structure of haze particulates from small nano-size
seed particles up to sub-micron irregularly shaped aggregates, accounting for
both pairwise collisions between the radiator and haze perturbers, and
quasi-static mean field shift of levels in haze environments. This formalism
can explain large flattening of absorption and emission spectra in haze
atmospheres and shows how the radiator - haze particle interaction affects the
absorption spectral shape in the wings of spectral lines and near their
centers. The theory can account for nearly all realistic structure, size and
chemical composition of haze particulates and predict their influence on
absorption and emission spectra in hazy environments. We illustrate the utility
of the method by computing shift and broadening of the emission spectra of the
sodium D line in an argon haze. The simplicity, elegance and generality of the
proposed model should make it amenable to a broad community of users in
astrophysics and chemistry.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRA
Why Simple Stellar Population models do not reproduce the colours of Galactic open clusters
(...) We search for an explanation of the disagreement between the observed
integrated colours of 650 local Galactic clusters and the theoretical colours
of present-day SSP models. We check the hypothesis that the systematic offsets
between observed and theoretical colours, which are and
, are caused by neglecting the discrete nature of the
underlying mass function. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we construct
artificial clusters of coeval stars taken from a mass distribution defined by
an Salpeter initial mass function (IMF) and compare them with corresponding
"continuous-IMF" SSP models. If the discreteness of the IMF is taken into
account, the model fits the observations perfectly and is able to explain
naturally a number of red "outliers" observed in the empirical colour-age
relation. We find that the \textit{systematic} offset between the continuous-
and discrete-IMF colours reaches its maximum of about 0.5 in for a
cluster mass at ages , and diminishes
substantially but not completely to about one hundredth of a magnitude at at cluster masses . At younger ages, it is still
present even in massive clusters, and for it is
larger than 0.1 mag in . Only for very massive clusters () with ages is the offset small (of the order of 0.04
mag) and smaller than the typical observational error of colours of
extragalactic clusters.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysics Letters, revised version after language editing and with an
additional reference to Cervino and Luridiana (2004
The evolution of luminosity, colour and the mass-to-luminosity ratio of Galactic open clusters: comparison of discrete vs. continuous IMF models
(abridged) We found in previous studies that standard Simple Stellar
Population (SSP) models are unable to describe or explain the colours of
Galactic open clusters both in the visible and in the NIR spectral range. (...)
We construct a numerical SSP-model, with an underlying Salpeter IMF, valid
within an upper and lower stellar mass range, and with total masses
typical of open clusters. We assume that the mass
loss from a cluster is provided by mass loss from evolved stars and by the
dynamical evaporation of low-mass members due to two-body relaxation. The data
for the latter process were scaled to the models from high-resolution N-body
calculations. We also investigate how a change of the -limit influences
magnitudes and colours of clusters of a given mass and derive a necessary
condition for a luminosity and colour flash. The discreteness of the IMF leads
to bursts in magnitude and colour of model clusters at moments when red
supergiants or giants appear and then die. The amplitude of the burst depends
on the cluster mass and on the spectral range; it is strongly increased in the
NIR compared to optical passbands. In the discrete case, variations of the
parameter are able to substantially change the magnitude-age and
-age relations. For the colours, the lowering of considerably
amplifies the discreteness effect. The influence of dynamical mass loss on
colour and magnitude is weak, although it provides a change of the slopes of
the considered relations, improving their agreement with observations. For the
Galactic open clusters we determined luminosity and tidal mass independent of
each other. The derived mass-to-luminosity ratio shows, on average, an increase
with cluster age in the optical, but gradually declines with age in the NIR.
The observed flash statistics can be used to constrain in open clusters.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysic
PPM-Extended (PPMX) - a catalogue of positions and proper motions
Aims: We build a catalogue PPM-Extended (PPMX) on the ICRS system which is
complete down to a well-defined limiting magnitude and contains the best
presently available proper motions to be suited for kinematical studies in the
Galaxy.
Methods: We perform a rigorous weighted least-squares adjustment of
individual observations, spread over more than a century, to determine mean
positions and proper motions. The stellar content of PPMX is taken from GSC 1.2
supplemented by catalogues like ARIHIP, PPM and Tycho-2 at the bright end. All
observations have been weighted according to their individual accuracy. The
catalogue has been screened towards rejecting false entries in the various
source catalogues.
Results: PPM-Extended (PPMX) is a catalogue of 18,088,920 stars containing
astrometric and photometric information. Its limiting magnitude is about 15.2
in the GSC photometric system. PPMX consists of three parts: a) a survey
complete down to R_U = 12.8 in the magnitude system of UCAC2; b) additional
stars of high-precision proper motions, and c) all other stars from GSC 1.2
identified in 2MASS. The typical accuracy of the proper motions is 2mas/y for
66 percent of the survey stars (a) and the high-precision stars (b), and about
10 mas/y for all other stars. PPMX contains photometric information from
ASCC-2.5 and 2MASS.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysic
An analytical description of the disruption of star clusters in tidal fields with an application to Galactic open clusters
We present a simple analytical description of the disruption of star clusters
in a tidal field, which agrees excellently with detailed N-body simulations.
The analytic expression can be used to predict the mass and age histograms of
surviving clusters for any cluster initial mass function and any cluster
formation history. The method is applied to open clusters in the solar
neighbourhood, based on the new cluster sample of Kharchenko et al. From a
comparison between the observed and predicted age distributions in the age
range between 10 Myr to 3 Gyr we find the following results: (1) The disruption
time of a 10^4 M_sun cluster in the solar neighbourhood is about 1.3+/-0.5 Gyr.
This is a factor 5 shorter than derived from N-body simulations of clusters in
the tidal field of the galaxy. (2) The present starformation rate in bound
clusters within 600 pc from the Sun is 5.9+/-0.8 * 10^2 M_sun / Myr, which
corresponds to a surface star formation rate in bound clusters of 5.2+/-0.7
10^(-10) M_sun/yr/pc^2. (3) The age distribution of open clusters shows a bump
between 0.26 and 0.6 Gyr when the cluster formation rate was 2.5 times higher
than before and after. (4) The present star formation rate in bound clusters is
half as small as that derived from the study of embedded clusters. The
difference suggests that half of the clusters in the solar neighbourhood become
unbound within 10 Myr. (5) The most massive clusters within 600 pc had an
initial mass of 3*10^4 M_sun. This is in agreement with the statistically
expected value based on a cluster initial mass function with a slope of -2,
even if the physical upper mass limit is as high as 10^6 M_sun.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures, to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysic
Polarization of the Charge-Exchange X-Rays Induced in the Heliosphere
We report results of a theoretical investigation of polarization of the X-ray emissions induced in charge-exchange collisions of fully stripped solar wind ions C6+and O8+ with the heliospheric hydrogen atoms. The polarization of X-ray emissions has been computed for line-of-sight observations within the ecliptic plane as a function of solar wind ion velocities, including a range of velocities corresponding to the slow and fast solar wind, and Coronal Mass Ejections. To determine the variability of polarization of heliospheric X-ray emissions, the polarization has been computed for solar minimum conditions with self-consistent parameters of the solar wind plasma and heliospheric gas and compared with the polarization calculated for an averaged solar activity. We predict the polarization of charge-exchange X-rays to be between 3% and 8%, depending on the line-of-sight geometry, solar wind ion velocity, and the selected emission lines
Long-range behavior of the optical potential for the elastic scattering of charged composite particles
The asymptotic behavior of the optical potential, describing elastic
scattering of a charged particle off a bound state of two charged, or
one charged and one neutral, particles at small momentum transfer
or equivalently at large intercluster distance
, is investigated within the framework of the exact three-body
theory. For the three-charged-particle Green function that occurs in the exact
expression for the optical potential, a recently derived expression, which is
appropriate for the asymptotic region under consideration, is used. We find
that for arbitrary values of the energy parameter the non-static part of the
optical potential behaves for as
. From this we derive for the
Fourier transform of its on-shell restriction for the behavior , i.e.,
dipole or quadrupole terms do not occur in the coordinate-space asymptotics.
This result corroborates the standard one, which is obtained by perturbative
methods. The general, energy-dependent expression for the dynamic
polarisability is derived; on the energy shell it reduces to the
conventional polarisability which is independent of the energy. We
emphasize that the present derivation is {\em non-perturbative}, i.e., it does
not make use of adiabatic or similar approximations, and is valid for energies
{\em below as well as above the three-body dissociation threshold}.Comment: 35 pages, no figures, revte
Development of Interpretation Skills in Future Escort Interpreters for Work in International Tourist Activity
The rapid development of international cooperation and interethnic contacts entails the need to improve training
in the field of tourism, including training of escort interpreters. It is known that escort interpreters must not only
have skills and abilities, but also constantly improve their knowledge of foreign languages. Thus, the problem of
optimizing the development of translation competence in escort interpreters is gaining importance. The aim of
the study is to substantiate the need to optimize the development of translation competence in escort interpreters
to work in international tourism. The article involved the following methods: theoretical review and analysis of
domestic and foreign literature on the problem of research, pedagogical observation and generalization of the
experience of training escort interpreters in universities. It was found that optimization of translation
competence in escort interpreters will be more effective in implementing the author’s model and methodology
presented in the professional. The theoretical significance of this article is that the theory and methodology of
vocational education identified and established the content of translation competence and a model for
optimizing its development. The practical significance lies in the focus on optimizing the translation competence
in translation guides. Relevant methods and programmes have been identified, which provide for development
and application in practice of professionally oriented language situations in improvement of foreign language
skills. The results indicate the effectiveness of established models and methods of optimizing development of
translation competence in escort interpreters to work in international tourism based on the improvement of
foreign language skills
Galactic Rotation Parameters from Data on Open Star Clusters
Currently available data on the field of velocities Vr, Vl, Vb for open star
clusters are used to perform a kinematic analysis of various samples that
differ by heliocentric distance, age, and membership in individual structures
(the Orion, Carina--Sagittarius, and Perseus arms). Based on 375 clusters
located within 5 kpc of the Sun with ages up to 1 Gyr, we have determined the
Galactic rotation parameters
Wo =-26.0+-0.3 km/s/kpc,
W'o = 4.18+-0.17 km/s/kpc^2,
W''o=-0.45+-0.06 km/s/kpc^3, the system contraction parameter K = -2.4+-0.1
km/s/kpc, and the parameters of the kinematic center Ro =7.4+-0.3 kpc and lo =
0+-1 degrees. The Galactocentric distance Ro in the model used has been found
to depend significantly on the sample age. Thus, for example, it is 9.5+-0.7
kpc and 5.6+-0.3 kpc for the samples of young (50 Myr)
clusters, respectively. Our study of the kinematics of young open star clusters
in various spiral arms has shown that the kinematic parameters are similar to
the parameters obtained from the entire sample for the Carina-Sagittarius and
Perseus arms and differ significantly from them for the Orion arm. The
contraction effect is shown to be typical of star clusters with various ages.
It is most pronounced for clusters with a mean age of 100 Myr, with the
contraction velocity being Kr = -4.3+-1.0 km/s.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, 2 table
The initial luminosity and mass functions of the Galactic open clusters
(... abridged) The observed luminosity function can be constructed in a range
of absolute integrated magnitudes mag, i.e. about 5
magnitudes deeper than in the most nearby galaxies. It increases linearly from
the brightest limit to a turnover at about . The slope of
this linear portion is , which agrees perfectly with the slope
deduced for star cluster observations in nearby galaxies. (...) We find that
the initial mass function of open clusters (CIMF) has a two-segment structure
with the slopes in the range and in the range . The average mass of open clusters at birth is
, which should be compared to the average observed mass
of about . The average cluster formation rate derived from the
comparison of initial and observed mass functions is . Multiplying by the age of the Galactic
disc (T = 13 Gyr) the predicted surface density of Galactic disc field stars
originating from dissolved open clusters amounts to which is about 40% of the total surface density of the
Galactic disc in the solar neighbourhood. Thus, we conclude that almost half of
all field stars were born in open clusters, a much higher fraction than
previously thought.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in A&
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