Potential usefulness of CCD imagers in astronomy

Two dimensional detectors have been important in astronomy since the earliest days of the science. Recently, the requirements for greater photometric accuracy, sensitivity and spectral coverage have driven the search for better imaging devices. Electron beam readout devices with a variety of target materials and intensification schemes, including the SEC and silicon vidicons, have been used successfully. The CCD as an image detector has several potential advantages over electron beam readout devices; low noise, simple construction and geometric stability are among them

Asteroid surface materials: Mineralogical characterizations from reflectance spectra

Mineral assemblages analogous to most meteorite types, with the exception of ordinary chondritic assemblages, have been found as surface materials of Main Belt asteroids. C1- and C2-like assemblages (unleached, oxidized meteoritic clay minerals plus opaques such as carbon) dominate the population throughout the Belt, especially in the outer Belt. A smaller population of asteroids exhibit surface materials similar to C3 (CO, CV) meteoritic assemblages (olivine plus opaque, probably carbon) and are also distributed throughout the Belt. The majority of remaining studied asteroids (20) of 65 asteroids exhibit spectral reflectance curves dominated by the presence of metallic nickel-iron in their surface materials. The C2-like materials which dominate the main asteroid belt population appear to be relatively rare on earth-approaching asteroids

Developed Toast, Modern Laundry: Nepali Household Appliance Discourses

This project investigates discourses of modernity, globalization, class identity, and social change in Kathmandu, Nepal, through the lens of ten Nepali women’s purchase and usage of home appliances. Four weeks of ethnographic research sought to identify prevailing practices and attitudes toward household appliances in the city, situating them in broader discourses of globalization, modernity, class identity, and social change. The project is composed of participant observation in Nepali homes, including informal interviews, with project participants sourced from my own social network. My collaborators’ practices and opinions on appliances engage discourses of the developmentalist and modernizing South Asian state, fluid and shifting markers of class identity in the postmodern, globalizing developing world, and the ways in which western and nonwestern public performativity surrounding appliances interacts in the globalized, time-space compressed 21st Century to create a conflicting and contrasting public and private culture of consumption and commodities

Interference filter photometry of periodic comet Ashbrook-Jackson

P/Ashbrook-Jackson has a period of 7.43 years and comes to perihelion at 2.284 AU. It is a low inclination object (12.5 deg) of moderate eccentricity (0.400). In 1963, it made the best possible apparition, coming to perihelion and opposition virtually simultaneously, but no one made physical observations of faint periodic comets in 1963. In 1978 Ashbrook-Jackson came to opposition on Sept. 28, just 40 days after perihelion. It will be just over 100 years before an equally favorable apparition recurs. P/Ashbrook-Jackson was recovered by Pereyra at Cordoba Observatory on April 28, 1977, more than a year and a quarter before perilhelion and already showing a diffuse coma with central condensation. Its helio-centric distance was then 3.7 AU. An extensive program was planned, but equipment problems and weather ultimately limited it to the two nights of data reported here