Towards the tumble resistant microlight

The tumble mode is a pitching departure from controlled flight which leads to a pitch autorotation that is generally unrecoverable – resulting in vertical ground impact, usually preceded by in-flight breakup (the mechanism for which, surprisingly, can sometimes prevent loss of life). This was identified in work led by the British Microlight Aircraft Association beginning in 1997 as a response to a number of fatal accidents in Rogallo winged microlight aeroplanes, although the tumble is also known to occur to hang-gliders. This paper explains how this class of aeroplane is controlled, and how it has been found that they can enter the tumble mode. The mechanism by which the tumble can be entered is described. This has led to work showing how flight testing can be used to establish and demonstrate resistance to tumble entry – particularly important with increasing number of very high performance flexwings. These flight tests will be explained, together with the significance of the results. Recent accident investigation work has also shown a new mechanism of tumble entry, through partial failure of the A-frame structure and the pitch-trimmer mechanism. Also described is a possible relevance to well known historical accidents to flying wing aeroplanes – specifically the YB-49 and dH-108, and discovered data on the characteristics of the BKB-1 flying wing glider; are also described

Aluminum abundances of multiple stellar generations in the globular cluster NGC 1851

We study the distribution of aluminum abundances among red giants in the peculiar globular cluster NGC 1851. Aluminum abundances were derived from the strong doublet Al I 8772-8773 A measured on intermediate resolution FLAMES spectra of 50 cluster stars acquired under the Gaia-ESO public survey. We coupled these abundances with previously derived abundance of O, Na, Mg to fully characterize the interplay of the NeNa and MgAl cycles of H-burning at high temperature in the early stellar generation in NGC 1851. The stars in our sample show well defined correlations between Al,Na and Si; Al is anticorrelated with O and Mg. The average value of the [Al/Fe] ratio steadily increases going from the first generation stars to the second generation populations with intermediate and extremely modified composition. We confirm on a larger database the results recently obtained by us (Carretta et al. 2011a): the pattern of abundances of proton-capture elements implies a moderate production of Al in NGC 1851. We find evidence of a statistically significant positive correlation between Al and Ba abundances in the more metal-rich component of red giants in NGC 1851.Comment: Astronomy and Astrophysics, in pres

An Abundance Analysis for Five Red Horizontal Branch Stars in the Extremely Metal Rich Globular Cluster NGC 6553

We provide a high dispersion line-by-line abundance analysis of five red HB stars in the extremely metal rich galactic globular cluster NGC 6553. These red HB stars are significantly hotter than the very cool stars near the tip of the giant branch in such a metal rich globular cluster and hence their spectra are much more amenable to an abundance analysis than would be the case for red giants. We find that the mean [Fe/H] for NGC 6553 is -0.16 dex, comparable to the mean abundance in the galactic bulge found by McWilliam & Rich (1994) and considerably higher than that obtained from an analysis of two red giants in this cluster by Barbuy etal (1999). The relative abundance for the best determined alpha process element (Ca) indicates an excess of alpha process elements of about a factor of two. The metallicity of NGC 6553 reaches the average of the Galactic bulge and of the solar neighborhood.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in the Ap

Na-O Anticorrelation and HB. VIII. Proton-capture elements and metallicities in 17 globular clusters from UVES spectra

We present homogeneous abundances for Fe and some of the elements involved in the proton-capture reactions (O, Na, Mg, Al, and Si) for 202 red giants in 17 Galactic globular clusters (GCs) from the analysis of high resolution UVES spectra obtained with FLAMES@ESO-VLT2. Our programme clusters span almost the whole range in metallicity of GCs and were selected to sample the widest range of global parameters (HB morphology, masses, concentration, etc). Here we focus on the discussion of the Na-O and Mg-Al anticorrelations and related issues. Our study finds clear Na and O star-to-star abundance variations in all GCs. Variations in Al are present in all but a few GCs. Finally, a spread in abundances of Mg and Si are also present in a few clusters. Mg is slightly less overabundant and Si slightly more overabundant in the most Al-rich stars. The correlation between Si and Al abundances is a signature of production of 28Si leaking from the Mg-Al cycle in a few clusters. The cross sections required for the proper reactions to take over in the cycle point to temperatures in excess of about 65 MK for the favoured site of production. We used a dilution model to infer the total range of Al abundances starting from the Al abundances in the UVES spectra, and the Na abundance distributions found from analysis of the much larger set of stars for which GIRAFFE spectra were available. We found that the maximum amount of additional Al produced by first generation polluters contributing to the composition of the second generation stars in each cluster is closely correlated with the same combination of metallicity and cluster luminosity that reproduced the minimum O abundances found from GIRAFFE spectra. We then suggest that the high temperatures required for the Mg-Al cycle are only reached in the most massive and most metal-poor polluters.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures, fig. 3 degraded. Accepted for publication on Astronomy and Astrophysic

Spectroscopic analysis of the two subgiant branches of the globular cluster NGC1851

NGC1851 possibly shows a spread in [Fe/H], but the relation between this spread and the division in the SGB is unknown. We obtained blue (3950-4600 A) intermediate resolution (R~8,000) spectra for 47 stars on the bright and 30 on the faint SGB of NGC 1851 (b-SGB and f-SGB, respectively). The determination of the atmospheric parameters to extremely high internal accuracy leads to small errors when comparing different stars in the cluster. We found that the b-SGB is slightly more metal-poor than the f-SGB, with [Fe/H]=-1.227+/-0.009 and [Fe/H]=-1.162+/- 0.012, respectively. This implies that the f-SGB is only slightly older by ~0.6 Gyr than the b-SGB if the total CNO abundance is constant. There are more C-normal stars in the b-SGB than in the f-SGB. This is consistent with what is found for HB stars, if b-SGB are the progenitors of red HB stars, and f-SGB those of blue HB ones. The abundances of the n-capture elements Sr and Ba have a bimodal distribution, reflecting the separation between f-SGB (Sr and Ba-rich) and b-SGB stars (Sr and Ba-poor). In both groups, there is a clear correlation between [Sr/Fe] and [Ba/Fe], suggesting that there is a real spread in the abundances of n-capture elements. There is some correlation between C and Ba abundances, while the same correlation for Sr is much more dubious. We identified six C-rich stars, which have a moderate overabundance of Sr and Ba and rather low N abundances. This group of stars might be the progenitors of these on the anomalous RGB in the (v, v-y) diagram. These results are discussed within different scenarios for the formation of NGC1851. It is possible that the two populations originated in different regions of an inhomogeneous parent object. However, the striking similarity with M22 calls for a similar evolution for these two clusters. Deriving reliable CNO abundances for the two sequences would be crucial.Comment: Accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysics; 16 pages, 20 figure

Homogeneous Modes of Cosmological Instantons

We discuss the O(4) invariant perturbation modes of cosmological instantons. These modes are spatially homogeneous in Lorentzian spacetime and thus not relevant to density perturbations. But their properties are important in establishing the meaning of the Euclidean path integral. If negative modes are present, the Euclidean path integral is not well defined, but may nevertheless be useful in an approximate description of the decay of an unstable state. When gravitational dynamics is included, counting negative modes requires a careful treatment of the conformal factor problem. We demonstrate that for an appropriate choice of coordinate on phase space, the second order Euclidean action is bounded below for normalized perturbations and has a finite number of negative modes. We prove that there is a negative mode for many gravitational instantons of the Hawking-Moss or Coleman-De Luccia type, and discuss the associated spectral flow. We also investigate Hawking-Turok constrained instantons, which occur in a generic inflationary model. Implementing the regularization and constraint proposed by Kirklin, Turok and Wiseman, we find that those instantons leading to substantial inflation do not possess negative modes. Using an alternate regularization and constraint motivated by reduction from five dimensions, we find a negative mode is present. These investigations shed new light on the suitability of Euclidean quantum gravity as a potential description of our universe.Comment: 16 pages, compressed and RevTex file, including one postscript figure fil

Infrared photometry of Young Massive Clusters in the starburst galaxy NGC 4214

We present the results of an infrared photometric survey performed with NICS@TNG in the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 4214. We derived accurate integrated JK magnitudes of 10 young massive clusters and compared them with the already available Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet colors. These clusters are located in the combined ultraviolet-infrared colors planes on well defined sequences, whose shapes allow a precise determination of their age. By means of the comparison with suitable stellar evolution models we estimated ages, metallicities, reddening and masses of these clusters. All the analyzed clusters appear to be younger than log(t/yr)<8.4, moderately metal-rich and slightly less massive than present-day Galactic globular clusters. The derived ages for clusters belonging to the secondary HII star forming complex are significantly larger than those previously estimated in the literature. We also discuss the possibility of using the ultraviolet-infrared color-color diagram to select candidate young massive clusters hosting multiple stellar populations.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication by MNRA

Beryllium in turnoff stars of NGC6397: early Galaxy spallation, cosmochronology and cluster formation

We present the first detection of beryllium in two turnoff stars of the old, metal-poor globular cluster NGC 6397. The beryllium lines are clearly detected and we determine a mean beryllium abundance of log(Be/H)=-12.35 +/- 0.2. The beryllium abundance is very similar to that of field stars of similar Fe content. We interpret the beryllium abundance observed as the result of primary spallation of cosmic rays acting on a Galactic scale, showing that beryllium can be used as a powerful cosmochronometer for the first stellar generations. With this method, we estimate that the cluster formed 0.2-0.3 Gyr after the onset of star formation in the Galaxy, in excellent agreement with the age derived from main sequence fitting. From the same spectra we also find low O (noticeably different for the two stars) and high N abundances, suggesting that the original gas was enriched in CNO processed material. Our beryllium results, together with the N, O, and Li abundances, provide insights on the formation of this globular cluster, showing that any CNO processing of the gas must have occurred in the protocluster cloud before the formation of the stars we observe now. We encounter, however, difficulties in giving a fully consistent picture of the cluster formation, able to explain the complex overall abundance pattern.Comment: to appear in A&