Eclipses During the 2010 Eruption of the Recurrent Nova U Scorpii

The eruption of the recurrent nova U Scorpii on 28 January 2010 is now the all-time best observed nova event. We report 36,776 magnitudes throughout its 67 day eruption, for an average of one measure every 2.6 minutes. This unique and unprecedented coverage is the first time that a nova has any substantial amount of fast photometry. With this, two new phenomena have been discovered: the fast flares in the early light curve seen from days 9-15 (which have no proposed explanation) and the optical dips seen out of eclipse from days 41-61 (likely caused by raised rims of the accretion disk occulting the bright inner regions of the disk as seen over specific orbital phases). The expanding shell and wind cleared enough from days 12-15 so that the inner binary system became visible, resulting in the sudden onset of eclipses and the turn-on of the supersoft X-ray source. On day 15, a strong asymmetry in the out-of-eclipse light points to the existence of the accretion stream. The normal optical flickering restarts on day 24.5. For days 15-26, eclipse mapping shows that the optical source is spherically symmetric with a radius of 4.1 R_sun. For days 26-41, the optical light is coming from a rim-bright disk of radius 3.4 R_sun. For days 41-67, the optical source is a center-bright disk of radius 2.2 R_sun. Throughout the eruption, the colors remain essentially constant. We present 12 eclipse times during eruption plus five just after the eruption.Comment: ApJ in press. 60 pages, 17 figure

Authomatic control of active power transfer in complex power pools

The investigation is concerned with mathematical models and methods of investigation of active power transfer control, laws of automatic control. The purpose of the work is to develop models and computer-aided investigation programs of transfer automatic control, to develop and investigate the solutions improving the efficiency of the corresponding control systems. The author has developed the procedures and models for imitation investigation of power transfer automatic control in complex power pools with due regard for the non-linearity of the control object. The author has developed and investigated a number of algorithms and solutions for improvement of control efficiency under existing and promising conditions. The author has studied the problems of interaction between the transfer control systems and the emergency-proof automatic systemsAvailable from VNTIC / VNTIC - Scientific & Technical Information Centre of RussiaSIGLERURussian Federatio

Toward Atmospheric Correction Algorithms for Sentinel-3/OLCI Images of Productive Waters

Atmospheric correction of remote sensing imagery over optically complex waters is still a challenging task. Even algorithms showing a good accuracy for moderate and extremely turbid waters need to be tested when being used for eutrophic inland basins. Such a test was carried out in this study on the example of a Sentinel-3/OLCI image of the productive waters of the Gorky Reservoir during the period of intense blue-green algal bloom using data on the concentration of chlorophyll a and remote sensing reflectance measured from the motorboat at many points of the reservoir. The accuracy of four common atmospheric correction (AC) algorithms was examined. All of them showed unsatisfactory accuracy due to incorrect determination of atmospheric aerosol parameters and aerosol radiance. The calculated aerosol optical depth (AOD) spectra varied widely (AOD(865) = 0.005 − 0.692) even over a small area (up to 10 × 10 km) and correlated with the measured chlorophyll a. As a result, a part of the high water-leaving signal caused by phytoplankton bloom was taken as an atmosphere signal. A significant overestimation of atmospheric aerosol parameters, as a consequence, led to a strong underestimation of the remote sensing reflectance and low accuracy of the considered AC algorithms. To solve this problem, an algorithm with a fixed AOD was proposed. The fixed AOD spectrum was determined in the area with relatively “clean” water as 5 percentiles of AOD in all water pixels. The proposed algorithm made it possible to obtain the remote sensing reflectance with high accuracy. The slopes of linear regression are close to 1 and the intercepts tend to zero in almost all spectral bands. The determination coefficients are more than 0.9; the bias, mean absolute percentage error, and root-mean-square error are notably lower than for other AC algorithms

Toward Atmospheric Correction Algorithms for Sentinel-3/OLCI Images of Productive Waters

Atmospheric correction of remote sensing imagery over optically complex waters is still a challenging task. Even algorithms showing a good accuracy for moderate and extremely turbid waters need to be tested when being used for eutrophic inland basins. Such a test was carried out in this study on the example of a Sentinel-3/OLCI image of the productive waters of the Gorky Reservoir during the period of intense blue-green algal bloom using data on the concentration of chlorophyll a and remote sensing reflectance measured from the motorboat at many points of the reservoir. The accuracy of four common atmospheric correction (AC) algorithms was examined. All of them showed unsatisfactory accuracy due to incorrect determination of atmospheric aerosol parameters and aerosol radiance. The calculated aerosol optical depth (AOD) spectra varied widely (AOD(865) = 0.005 − 0.692) even over a small area (up to 10 × 10 km) and correlated with the measured chlorophyll a. As a result, a part of the high water-leaving signal caused by phytoplankton bloom was taken as an atmosphere signal. A significant overestimation of atmospheric aerosol parameters, as a consequence, led to a strong underestimation of the remote sensing reflectance and low accuracy of the considered AC algorithms. To solve this problem, an algorithm with a fixed AOD was proposed. The fixed AOD spectrum was determined in the area with relatively “clean” water as 5 percentiles of AOD in all water pixels. The proposed algorithm made it possible to obtain the remote sensing reflectance with high accuracy. The slopes of linear regression are close to 1 and the intercepts tend to zero in almost all spectral bands. The determination coefficients are more than 0.9; the bias, mean absolute percentage error, and root-mean-square error are notably lower than for other AC algorithms

Aerosol Optical Properties above Productive Waters of Gorky Reservoir for Atmospheric Correction of Sentinel-3/OLCI Images

The main challenge that one has to face during the atmospheric correction (AC) of productive inland waters is the inability to correctly separate aerosol radiance from water-leaving radiance in the near-infrared range (NIR) bands. This leads both to incorrect estimates of the aerosol parameters and the remote-sensing reflectance (Rrs). For the Gorky Reservoir, where we are developing regional bio-optical models, the situation is complicated by the lack of field measurements of aerosol optical properties due to the significant remoteness of AERONET stations. The standard AC algorithms, as shown earlier, greatly overestimated the aerosol radiance in all spectral bands up to red bands during the period of intense cyanobacteria blooms, while the algorithm with a fixed aerosol optical depth (AOD) obtained in a clean water area gave encouraging results. Therefore, it was important to investigate the characteristics of the atmosphere above the reservoir and validate the proposed approach for regular use of Sentinel-3 imagery of the Gorky Reservoir. To solve these issues, regular in situ aerosol measurements using the handheld sun photometer SPM were performed. The measured AOD and the Angstrom exponent were compared with the estimates of these parameters from two Sentinel-3/OLCI Level-2 products, namely, Synergy (SYN) and Water Full Resolution products (OL_2_WFR). It was found that AOD and the Angstrom exponent from these standard products were overestimated by 2–3 times and almost 2 times in all cases. Atmospheric correction with fixed AOD, defined by measurements, allows us to completely get rid of negative Rrs, and its shapes and values became typical for the Gorky Reservoir. Despite the overestimation of AOD in traditional AC and its large variations in general, it was found that the minimum AOD spectrum is close to the measured spectrum. Therefore, the AOD spectra, which correspond to the two percentiles of the distribution, can be used for preliminary AC with a fixed AOD of the Sentinel-3/OLCI imaginary. The relative errors of the Rrs retrievals using the two percentile AOD compared to the measured AOD were 3–35% in the green and red bands of Sentinel-3/OLCI

Regional Models for High-Resolution Retrieval of Chlorophyll <i>a</i> and TSM Concentrations in the Gorky Reservoir by Sentinel-2 Imagery

The possibilities of chlorophyll a (Chl a) and total suspended matter (TSM) retrieval using Sentinel-2/MSI imagery and in situ measurements in the Gorky Reservoir are investigated. This water body is an inland freshwater ecosystem within the territory of the Russian Federation. During the algal bloom period, the optical properties of water are extremely heterogeneous and vary on scales of tens of meters. Additionally, they vary in time under the influence of currents and wind forcing. In this case, the usage of the traditional station-based sampling to describe the state of the reservoir may be uninformative and not rational. Therefore, we proposed an original approach based on simultaneous in situ measurements of the remote sensing reflectance by a single radiometer and the concentration of water constituents by an ultraviolet fluorescence LiDAR from a high-speed gliding motorboat. This approach provided fast data collection including 4087 synchronized LiDAR and radiometric measurements with high spatial resolutions of 8 m for two hours. A part of the dataset was coincided with Sentinel-2 overpass and used for the development of regional algorithms for the retrieval of Chl a and TSM concentrations. For inland waters of the Russian Federation, such research was performed for the first time. The proposed algorithms can be used for regular environmental monitoring of the Gorky Reservoir using ship measurements or Sentinel-2 images. Additionally, they can be adapted for neighboring reservoirs, for example, for other seven reservoirs on the Volga River. Moreover, the proposed ship measurement approach can be useful in the practice of limnological monitoring of inland freshwater ecosystems with high spatiotemporal variability of the optical properties