1,960 research outputs found
NuSTAR detection of X-ray heating events in the quiet Sun
The explanation of the coronal heating problem potentially lies in the existence of nanoflares, numerous small-scale heating events occurring across the whole solar disk. In this Letter, we present the first imaging spectroscopy X-ray observations of three quiet Sun flares during the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray (NuSTAR) solar campaigns on 2016 July 26 and 2017 March 21, concurrent with the Solar Dynamics Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO/AIA) observations. Two of the three events showed time lags of a few minutes between peak X-ray and extreme ultraviolet emissions. Isothermal fits with rather low temperatures in the range 3.2–4.1 MK and emission measures of (0.6–15) × 1044 cm−3 describe their spectra well, resulting in thermal energies in the range (2–6) × 1026 erg. NuSTAR spectra did not show any signs of a nonthermal or higher temperature component. However, as the estimated upper limits of (hidden) nonthermal energy are comparable to the thermal energy estimates, the lack of a nonthermal component in the observed spectra is not a constraining result. The estimated Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) classes from the fitted values of temperature and emission measure fall between 1/1000 and 1/100 A class level, making them eight orders of magnitude fainter in soft X-ray flux than the largest solar flares
NuSTAR hard X-ray observation of a sub-A class solar flare
We report a NuSTAR observation of a solar microflare, SOL2015-09-01T04.
Although it was too faint to be observed by the GOES X-ray Sensor, we estimate
the event to be an A0.1 class flare in brightness. This microflare, with only 5
counts per second per detector observed by RHESSI, is fainter than any hard
X-ray (HXR) flare in the existing literature. The microflare occurred during a
solar pointing by the highly sensitive NuSTAR astrophysical observatory, which
used its direct focusing optics to produce detailed HXR microflare spectra and
images. The microflare exhibits HXR properties commonly observed in larger
flares, including a fast rise and more gradual decay, earlier peak time with
higher energy, spatial dimensions similar to the RHESSI microflares, and a
high-energy excess beyond an isothermal spectral component during the impulsive
phase. The microflare is small in emission measure, temperature, and energy,
though not in physical size; observations are consistent with an origin via the
interaction of at least two magnetic loops. We estimate the increase in thermal
energy at the time of the microflare to be 2.4x10^27 ergs. The observation
suggests that flares do indeed scale down to extremely small energies and
retain what we customarily think of as "flarelike" properties.Comment: Status: Accepted by the Astrophysical Journal, 2017 July 1
Microflare Heating of a Solar Active Region Observed with NuSTAR, Hinode/XRT, and SDO/AIA
NuSTAR is a highly sensitive focusing hard X-ray (HXR) telescope and has
observed several small microflares in its initial solar pointings. In this
paper, we present the first joint observation of a microflare with NuSTAR and
Hinode/XRT on 2015 April 29 at ~11:29 UT. This microflare shows heating of
material to several million Kelvin, observed in Soft X-rays (SXRs) with
Hinode/XRT, and was faintly visible in Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) with SDO/AIA.
For three of the four NuSTAR observations of this region (pre-, decay, and post
phases) the spectrum is well fitted by a single thermal model of 3.2-3.5 MK,
but the spectrum during the impulsive phase shows additional emission up to 10
MK, emission equivalent to A0.1 GOES class. We recover the differential
emission measure (DEM) using SDO/AIA, Hinode/XRT, and NuSTAR, giving
unprecedented coverage in temperature. We find the pre-flare DEM peaks at ~3 MK
and falls off sharply by 5 MK; but during the microflare's impulsive phase the
emission above 3 MK is brighter and extends to 10 MK, giving a heating rate of
about erg s. As the NuSTAR spectrum is purely
thermal we determined upper-limits on the possible non-thermal bremsstrahlung
emission. We find that for the accelerated electrons to be the source of the
heating requires a power-law spectrum of with a low energy
cut-off keV. In summary, this first NuSTAR microflare
strongly resembles much more powerful flares.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 14 pages with 12 figures and 1 tabl
A high specific power solar array for low to mid-power spacecraft
UltraFlex is the generic term for a solar array system which delivers on-orbit power in the 400 to 6,000 watt per wing sizes with end-of-life specific power performance ranging to 150 watts-per-kilogram. Such performance is accomplished with off-the-shelf solar cells and state-of the-art materials and processes. Much of the recent work in photovoltaics is centered on advanced solar cell development. Successful as such work has been, no integrated solar array system has emerged which meets NASA's stated goals of 'increasing the end-of-life performance of space solar cells and arrays while minimizing their mass and cost.' This issue is addressed; namely, is there an array design that satisfies the usual requirements for space-rated hardware and that is inherently reliable, inexpensive, easily manufactured and simple, which can be used with both advanced cells currently in development and with inexpensive silicon cells? The answer is yes. The UltraFlex array described incorporates use of a blanket substrate which is thermally compatible with silicon and other materials typical of advanced multi-junction devices. The blanket materials are intrinsically insensitive to atomic oxygen degradation, are space rated, and are compatible with standard cell bonding processes. The deployment mechanism is simple and reliable and the structure is inherently stiff (high natural frequency). Mechanical vibration modes are also readily damped. The basic design is presented as well as supporting analysis and development tests
Mixed-Morphology Supernova Remnants in X-rays: Isothermal Plasma in HB21 and Probable Oxygen-Rich Ejecta in CTB 1
(Abridged) We present an analysis of X-ray observations made of the Galactic
supernova remnants (SNRs) HB21 (G89.0+4.7) and CTB 1 (G116.9+0.2), two
well-known mixed-morphology (MM) SNRs. We find a marked contrast between the
X-ray properties of these SNRs: for HB21, the extracted ASCA spectra of the
northwest and southeast regions of the X-ray emitting plasma can be fit with a
single thermal model with marginally enhanced silicon and sulfur abundances.
For both of these regions, the derived column density and temperature are
N_H~0.3x10^22 cm^-2 and kT~0.7 keV, respectively. No significant spatial
differences in temperature or elemental abundances between the two regions are
detected and the X-ray-emitting plasma in both regions is close to ionization
equilibrium. Our Chandra spectral analysis of CTB 1 reveals that this source is
likely an oxygen-rich SNR with enhanced abundances of oxygen and neon. The
extracted ASCA spectra for the southwestern and northeastern regions of CTB 1
cannot be fit with a single thermal component. Based on our fits to these
spectra, we derive a column density N_H~0.6x10^22 cm^-2 and a temperature for
the soft thermal component of kT_soft~0.28 keV. The hard emission from the
southwest may be modeled with either a thermal component (kT_hard~3 keV) or by
a power law component (Gamma~2-3) while the hard emission from the northeast
may be modeled with a power law component (Gamma~1.4). We have also extracted
ASCA GIS spectra of the discrete X-ray source 1WGA J0001.4+6229 which is seen
in projection toward CTB 1. These spectra are best fit using a power-law model
with a photon index Gamma=2.2^{+0.5}_{-1.2} which is typical for featureless
power-law continua produced by rotation-powered pulsars. This source may be a
neutron star associated with CTB 1.Comment: 46 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in the Astronomical
Journa
Forecasting the cytokine storm following systemic interleukin (IL)-2 administration
Extensive clinical experience has shown that systemic interleukin (IL)-2 administration can induce complete or partial regression of renal cell cancer (RCC) metastases in 15 to 20 % of patients. Since IL-2 has no direct anti-cancer effects, it is believed that cancer regression is mediated either by a direct modulation of immune cell effector functions or through the mediation of soluble factors released as a result of IL-2 administration. We previously observed that transcriptional and protein changes induced by systemic IL-2 administration affect predominantly mononuclear phagocytes with little effect, particularly within the tumor microenvironment, on T cell activation, localization and proliferation. It further appeared that mononuclear phagocyte activation could be best explained by the indirect mediation of a secondary release of cytokines by IL-2 responsive cells either in the circulation or in peripheral tissues. To better characterize the cytokine outburst that follows systemic IL-2 administration we followed the serum levels of 68 soluble factors in ten patients with RCC undergoing high dose (720,000 IU/kg intravenously every 8 hours) IL-2 therapy. Serum was collected before therapy, 3 hours after the 1(st )and 4(th )dose and assayed on a multiplexed protein array platform. This study demonstrated that 1) the serum concentration of more than half the soluble factors studied changed significantly during therapy; 2) changes became more dramatic with increasing doses; 3) subclasses of soluble factors displayed different kinetics and 4) cytokine patterns varied quantitatively among patients. This study shows that the cytokine storm that follows systemic IL-2 administration is complex and far-reaching inclusive of soluble factors with disparate, partly redundant and partly contrasting effects on immune function. Therefore comparing in parallel large number of soluble factors, it sets a comprehensive foundation for further elucidation of "cytokine storm" in larger patient pools. Based on this analysis, we propose a prospective collection of serum samples in a larger cohort of patients undergoing IL-2 administration with the purpose of discerning patterns predictive of clinical outcome and toxicity
Demonstrating high-precision photometry with a CubeSat: ASTERIA observations of 55 Cancri e
ASTERIA (Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research In Astrophysics) is a 6U
CubeSat space telescope (10 cm x 20 cm x 30 cm, 10 kg). ASTERIA's primary
mission objective was demonstrating two key technologies for reducing
systematic noise in photometric observations: high-precision pointing control
and high-stabilty thermal control. ASTERIA demonstrated 0.5 arcsecond RMS
pointing stability and 10 milliKelvin thermal control of its camera
payload during its primary mission, a significant improvement in pointing and
thermal performance compared to other spacecraft in ASTERIA's size and mass
class. ASTERIA launched in August 2017 and deployed from the International
Space Station (ISS) November 2017. During the prime mission (November 2017 --
February 2018) and the first extended mission that followed (March 2018 - May
2018), ASTERIA conducted opportunistic science observations which included
collection of photometric data on 55 Cancri, a nearby exoplanetary system with
a super-Earth transiting planet. The 55 Cancri data were reduced using a custom
pipeline to correct CMOS detector column-dependent gain variations. A Markov
Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach was used to simultaneously detrend the
photometry using a simple baseline model and fit a transit model. ASTERIA made
a marginal detection of the known transiting exoplanet 55 Cancri e
(~\Rearth), measuring a transit depth of ppm. This is the
first detection of an exoplanet transit by a CubeSat. The successful detection
of super-Earth 55 Cancri e demonstrates that small, inexpensive spacecraft can
deliver high-precision photometric measurements.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures. Accepted in A
Joint X-ray, EUV and UV Observations of a Small Microflare
We present the first joint observation of a small microflare in X-rays with the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray (NuSTAR), in UV with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), and in EUV with the Solar Dynamics Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO/AIA). These combined observations allow us to study the hot coronal and cooler chromospheric/transition region emission from the microflare. This small microflare peaks from 2016 July 26 23:35 to 23:36 UT, in both NuSTAR, SDO/AIA, and IRIS. Spatially, this corresponds to a small loop visible in the SDO/AIA Fe XVIII emission, which matches a similar structure lower in the solar atmosphere seen by IRIS in SJI1330 and 1400 Å. The NuSTAR emission in both 2.5–4 and 4–6 keV is located in a source at this loop location. The IRIS slit was over the microflaring loop, and fits show little change in Mg II but do show intensity increases, slight width enhancements, and redshifts in Si IV and O IV, indicating that this microflare had most significance in and above the upper chromosphere. The NuSTAR microflare spectrum is well fitted by a thermal component of 5.1 MK and 6.2 × 10^(44) cm^(−3), which corresponds to a thermal energy of 1.5 × 10^(26) erg, making it considerably smaller than previously studied active region microflares. No non-thermal emission was detected but this could be due to the limited effective exposure time of the observation. This observation shows that even ordinary features seen in UV can remarkably have a higher-energy component that is clear in X-rays
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