The Mount Wilson optical interferometer: The first automated instrument and the prospects for lunar interferometry

Before contemplating an optical interferometer on the Moon one must first review the accomplishments achieved by this technology in scientific applications for astronomy. This will be done by presenting the technical status of optical interferometry as achieved by the Mount Wilson Optical Interferometer. The further developments needed for a future lunar-based interferometer are discussed

IRAS observations of giant molecular clouds in the Milky Way

The IRAS data base has been used to study infrared radiation from molecular clouds in our galaxy. The sample of clouds was restricted to those with reliably determined molecular masses from large area, multi-isotope CO maps. They were normalized to X(CO-13)= 2x10 to the -6. Flux densities at 60 microns and 100 microns were determined by integrating the flux density within rectangles drawn on the sky flux plates after subtracting a suitable background. The rectangles were chosen to be coextensive with the areas mapped in CO. Color corrections were made and luminosites calculated by assuming the optical depths were proportional to frequency. The flux densities were converted to dust masses with a value for 4a rho/3Q = .04 g/cm at 100 microns

The effect of organic compounds on the growth rate of cloud droplets in marine and forest settings

International audienceOrganic matter represents an important fraction of the fine particle aerosol, yet our knowledge of the roles of organics in the activation of aerosol particles into cloud droplets is poor. A cloud condensation nucleus (CCN) counter is used to examine the relative growth rates of cloud droplets for case studies from field measurements on the North Pacific Ocean and in a coniferous forest. A model of the condensational growth of water droplets, on particles dissolving according to their solubility in water, is used to simulate the initial scattering of the droplets as they grow in the CCN counter. Simulations of the growth rates of fine particles sampled in the marine boundary layer of the North Pacific Ocean indicate that the main influence of the marine organic material on the water uptake rate is from its effect on the size distribution of the sulphate. Simulations of the observations of water uptake on biogenic organic aerosol particles sampled in a coniferous forest indicate an impact of the organic on the water uptake rates, but one that is still smaller than that of pure sulphate. The solubility of the organic becomes an important factor in determining the water uptake as the organic mass increases relative to sulphate. The values of the organic component of the hygroscopicity parameter ? that describes the CCN activity were found to be negligible for the marine particles and 0.02?0.05 for the forest particles

Measurements of binary stars with coherent integration of NPOI data

In this paper we use coherently integrated visibilities (see separate paper in these proceedings, Jorgensen et al. 2008) to measure the properties of binary stars. We use only the phase of the complex visibility and not the amplitude. The reason for this is that amplitudes suffer from the calibration effect (the same for coherent and incoherent averages) and thus effectively provide lower accuracy measurements. We demonstrate that the baseline phase alone can be used to measure the separation, orientation and brightness ratio of a binary star, as a function of wavelength.Comment: 2008 SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentatio

Sound propagation in density wave conductors and the effect of long-range Coulomb interaction

We study theoretically the sound propagation in charge- and spin-density waves in the hydrodynamic regime. First, making use of the method of comoving frame, we construct the stress tensor appropriate for quasi-one dimensional systems within tight-binding approximation. Taking into account the screening effect of the long-range Coulomb interaction, we find that the increase of the sound velocity below the critical temperature is about two orders of magnitude less for longitudinal sound than for transverse one. It is shown that only the transverse sound wave with displacement vector parallel to the chain direction couples to the phason of the density wave, therefore we expect significant electromechanical effect only in this case.Comment: revtex, 14 pages (in preprint form), submitted to PR