Improved alkaline extraction method for biogenic silica determination in volcanic soils

Here we present the first results obtained with an innovative technique aiming at measuring biogenic and lithogenic amorphous silica contents in soils developed on basaltic parent material. Biogenic silica (BSi) has become important to many research domains like soil science, biogeochemistry, aquatic sciences, palaeoecology, and agricultural sciences. In most soils, BSi is a small but highly reactive Si pool in comparison to lithogenic Si sources. This high reactivity makes it a key component of the soil-plant Si cycle. In the last decade, the continental cycle of Si has been increasingly studied, because of (1) the importance of Si as a nutrient for plants and diatoms (studies include e.g., impact of land-use change, export through harvest, influence on crops resistance to various kinds of stress) and (2) the major role of Si during chemical weathering. Constraining Si reservoirs in soils is, however, not an easy task due to the ubiquity of Si. Many methods have been developed to quantify BSi content in soils (mostly alkaline extraction techniques) and other Si pools in soils (e.g., mobile Si, adsorbed Si, … with the sequential Si extraction by Georgiadis et al. 2013 [1]). BSi extraction methods that are based only on solubility are, however, difficult to apply to environments where large amounts of lithogenic amorphous or poorly crystalline aluminosilicates are present, like e.g. in volcanic soils, as their solubility is close to that of BSi. In order to study the soil/plant Si cycle in such soils, leaching methods, quasi-continuously analysing both the dissolution kinetics and the chemistry of the dissolving phases, provide better control of the dissolving Si sources. Several authors successfully used methods similar to the one applied here on various materials. This is however the first study that applies such method with quasi-continuous monitoring of released elements on the challenging material that is volcanic soils

The Position of High Frequency Waves with Respect to the Granulation Pattern

High frequency velocity oscillations were observed in the spectral lines Fe I 543.45nm and 543.29nm, using 2D spectroscopy with a Fabry- Perot and speckle reconstruction, at the VTT in Tenerife. We investigate the radial component of waves with frequencies in the range 8 - 22mHz in the internetwork, network and a pore. We find that the occurrence of waves do not show any preference on location and are equally distributed over down-flows and up-flows, regardless of the activity of the observed area in the line of Fe I 543.45nm. The waves observed in the lower formed line of Fe I 543.29nm seem to appear preferentially over down-flows.Comment: Article has 12 pages and 7 images. It is accepted in Solar Physics Journa

Thermal characteristics of a classical solar telescope primary mirror

We present a detailed thermal and structural analysis of a 2m class solar telescope mirror which is subjected to a varying heat load at an observatory site. A 3-dimensional heat transfer model of the mirror takes into account the heating caused by a smooth and gradual increase of the solar flux during the day-time observations and cooling resulting from the exponentially decaying ambient temperature at night. The thermal and structural response of two competing materials for optical telescopes, namely Silicon Carbide -best known for excellent heat conductivity and Zerodur -preferred for its extremely low coefficient of thermal expansion, is investigated in detail. The insight gained from these simulations will provide a valuable input for devising an efficient and stable thermal control system for the primary mirror.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in New Astronom

Ambrein: a minor, but common constituent of mammalian faeces?

For nearly 200 years, the only natural source of the alcohol ambrein has been coproliths produced in about 1% of sperm whales and in related jetsam. However, the finding of ambrein in adipocere/faeces of human corpses, led us to hypothesise that ambrein might occur in the faeces of other mammals. Herein, we used a recently developed gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method, with suitable derivatisation of the hindered hydroxy group of ambrein, to screen a number of extracts of mammalian faeces. Minor proportions of ambrein were detected in digested human sewage sludge and in the dung of elephant, domestic cattle, giraffe and buffalo. Whether ambrein formation in the terrestrial species is associated with coprolith formation, is unknown, but solid deposits known as enteroliths and fecaliths occur in humans and some domestic animals

Biogenes Silizium in stark desilifizierten Böden unter Ölpalmenanbau auf Sumatra, Indonesien

Vor allem seit den 70er Jahren ist auf Sumatra (Indonesien) ein rapider Flächenverlust tropischer Regenwälder durch die Etablierung von Ölpalmenplantagen zu verzeichnen. Neben positiven Auswirkungen auf den Lebensstandard von Kleinbauern, führt die Intensivierung von Ölpalmenanbau zu abnehmender Biodiversität und Bodenfruchtbarkeit sowie zur Degradation assoziierter ökosystemarer Funktionen. Bisher ist nicht bekannt, welche Auswirkungen der Anbau von Ölpalmen, die zu den Silizium-Akkumulatoren zählen, auf den Si-Kreislauf intensiv desilifizierter Böden hat. Silizium (Si) wird in natürlichen Regenwäldern durch den Streuabbau in den Boden zurückgeführt. Dabei stellt Si in biogener amorpher Kieselsäure (BSi, z. B. in Phytolithen) eine wesentliche Quelle von pflanzenverfügbarem, gelöstem Si (DSi) dar. Die hier vorgestellte Studie zielt auf die Prüfung der Hypothese ab, dass Ölpalmen durch ihren aktiven DSi-Entzug aus der Bodenlösung die Nachlieferung von DSi aus dem höchst reaktiven BSi-Pool ankurbeln, sodass dieser im Laufe der Zeit abnimmt. Diese Veränderungen des Si-Kreislaufs können langfristig zu einem Si-Verlust auf stark desilifizierten Böden unter Ölpalmenanbau führen. Zur Prüfung dieser Hypothese werden in dieser Studie Si-Pools in Oberböden von Acrisols unter Ölpalmenplantagen und tropischen Tiefland-Regenwäldern mittels der sequentiellen Si-Extraktion nach Georgiadis et al. [1] quantifiziert

Twisting Flux Tubes as a cause of Micro-Flaring Activity

High-cadence optical observations of an H-alpha blue-wing bright point near solar AR NOAA 10794 are presented. The data were obtained with the Dunn Solar Telescope at the National Solar Observatory/Sacramento Peak using a newly developed camera system, the Rapid Dual Imager. Wavelet analysis is undertaken to search for intensity-related oscillatory signatures, and periodicities ranging from 15 to 370 s are found with significance levels exceeding 95%. During two separate microflaring events, oscillation sites surrounding the bright point are observed to twist. We relate the twisting of the oscillation sites to the twisting of physical flux tubes, thus giving rise to reconnection phenomena. We derive an average twist velocity of 8.1 km/s and detect a peak in the emitted flux between twist angles of 180 and 230 degrees.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure

Spicule emission profiles observed in \ion{He}{i} 10830 \AA

Off-the-limb observations with high spatial and spectral resolution will help us understand the physical properties of spicules in the solar chromosphere Spectropolarimetric observations of spicules in the \ion{He}{i} 10830 \AA\ multiplet were obtained with the Tenerife Infrared Polarimeter on the German Vacuum Tower Telescope at the Observatorio del Teide (Tenerife, Spain). The analysis shows the variation of the off-limb emission profiles as a function of the distance to the visible solar limb. The ratio between the intensities of the blue and the red components of this triplet $({\cal R}=I_{\rm blue}/I_{\rm red})$ is an observational signature of the optical thickness along the light path, which is related to the intensity of the coronal irradiation. We present observations of the intensity profiles of spicules above a quiet Sun region. The observable ${\cal R}$ as a function of the distance to the visible limb is also given. We have compared our observational results to the intensity ratio obtained from detailed radiative transfer calculations in semi-empirical models of the solar atmosphere assuming spherical geometry. The agreement is purely qualitative. We argue that future models of the solar chromosphere and transition region should account for the observational constraints presented here.Comment: letter accepted in A&A. 5 figure

High-Frequency Oscillations in a Solar Active Region observed with the Rapid Dual Imager

High-cadence, synchronized, multiwavelength optical observations of a solar active region (NOAA 10794) are presented. The data were obtained with the Dunn Solar Telescope at the National Solar Observatory/Sacramento Peak using a newly developed camera system : the Rapid Dual Imager. Wavelet analysis is undertaken to search for intensity related oscillatory signatures, and periodicities ranging from 20 to 370 s are found with significance levels exceeding 95%. Observations in the H-alpha blue wing show more penumbral oscillatory phenomena when compared to simultaneous G-band observations. The H-alpha oscillations are interpreted as the signatures of plasma motions with a mean velocity of 20 km/s. The strong oscillatory power over H-alpha blue-wing and G-band penumbral bright grains is an indication of the Evershed flow with frequencies higher than previously reported.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figure

The Wave-Front Correction System for the Sunrise Balloon-Borne Solar Observatory

This paper describes the wave-front correction system developed for the Sunrise balloon telescope, and it provides information about its in-flight performance. For the correction of low-order aberrations, a Correlating Wave-Front Sensor (CWS) was used. It consisted of a six-element Shack - Hartmann wave-front sensor (WFS), a fast tip-tilt mirror for the compensation of image motion, and an active telescope secondary mirror for focus correction. The CWS delivered a stabilized image with a precision of 0.04 arcsec (rms), whenever the coarse pointing was better than ± 45 arcsec peak-to-peak. The automatic focus adjustment maintained a focus stability of 0.01 waves in the focal plane of the CWS. During the 5.5 day flight, good image quality and stability were achieved during 33 hours, containing 45 sequences, which lasted between 10 and 45 min. © 2010 The Author(s)

Mid-infrared sizes of circumstellar disks around Herbig Ae/Be stars measured with MIDI on the VLTI

We present the first long baseline mid-infrared interferometric observations of the circumstellar disks surrounding Herbig Ae/Be stars. The observations were obtained using the mid-infrared interferometric instrument MIDI at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer VLTI on Cerro Paranal. The 102 m baseline given by the telescopes UT1 and UT3 was employed, which provides a maximum full spatial resolution of 20 milli-arcsec (mas) at a wavelength of 10 μm. The interferometric signal was spectrally dispersed at a resolution of 30, giving spectrally resolved visibility information from 8 μm to 13.5 μm. We observed seven nearby Herbig Ae/Be stars and resolved all objects. The warm dust disk of HD 100546 could even be resolved in single-telescope imaging. Characteristic dimensions of the emitting regions at 10 μm are found to be from 1 AU to 10 AU. The 10 μm sizes of our sample stars correlate with the slope of the 10–25 μm infrared spectrum in the sense that the reddest objects are the largest ones. Such a correlation would be consistent with a different geometry in terms of flaring or flat (self-shadowed) disks for sources with strong or moderate mid-infrared excess, respectively. We compare the observed spectrally resolved visibilities with predictions based on existing models of passive centrally irradiated hydrostatic disks made to fit the SEDs of the observed stars. We find broad qualitative agreement of the spectral shape of visibilities corresponding to these models with our observations. Quantitatively, there are discrepancies that show the need for a next step in modelling of circumstellar disks, satisfying both the spatial constraints such as are now available from the MIDI observations and the flux constraints from the SEDs in a consistent way