15,813 research outputs found
Interstellar absorption lines in the spectrum of sigma Sco using Copernicus observations
Since the launch of Copernicus in 1972, studies have been made of the depletion of gas-phase elements onto dust grains. A few stars have been studied in detail, resulting in a standard depletion pattern which has since been used for comparison. Recent developments, however, have suggested that this standard pattern may need to be re-examined. Some weak, semi-forbidden lines were detected recently which may be able to resolve some of the ambiguities. Studies of single elements have shown that depletion of carbon and oxgyen are much smaller than previously determined. The high resolution ultraviolet spectral scans of sigma Sco were originally made in 1973, but have only recently been analyzed. All these stars are bright and moderately reddened. All four stars will be analyzed in detail, but sigma Sco is the first one completed. The data has broad coverage of ions, making these stars excellent candidates for determination of accurate depletions. A profile-fitting analysis was used rather than curves-of-growth in order to determine separate abundances and depletions in components separated by several km/sec
Asteroseismic Signatures of Stellar Magnetic Activity Cycles
Observations of stellar activity cycles provide an opportunity to study
magnetic dynamos under many different physical conditions. Space-based
asteroseismology missions will soon yield useful constraints on the interior
conditions that nurture such magnetic cycles, and will be sensitive enough to
detect shifts in the oscillation frequencies due to the magnetic variations. We
derive a method for predicting these shifts from changes in the Mg II activity
index by scaling from solar data. We demonstrate this technique on the
solar-type subgiant beta Hyi, using archival International Ultraviolet Explorer
spectra and two epochs of ground-based asteroseismic observations. We find
qualitative evidence of the expected frequency shifts and predict the optimal
timing for future asteroseismic observations of this star.Comment: 5 pages including 3 figures and 1 table, MNRAS Letters accepte
ICONA: Inter Cluster ONOS Network Application
Several Network Operating Systems (NOS) have been proposed in the last few
years for Software Defined Networks; however, a few of them are currently
offering the resiliency, scalability and high availability required for
production environments. Open Networking Operating System (ONOS) is an open
source NOS, designed to be reliable and to scale up to thousands of managed
devices. It supports multiple concurrent instances (a cluster of controllers)
with distributed data stores. A tight requirement of ONOS is that all instances
must be close enough to have negligible communication delays, which means they
are typically installed within a single datacenter or a LAN network. However in
certain wide area network scenarios, this constraint may limit the speed of
responsiveness of the controller toward network events like failures or
congested links, an important requirement from the point of view of a Service
Provider. This paper presents ICONA, a tool developed on top of ONOS and
designed in order to extend ONOS capability in network scenarios where there
are stringent requirements in term of control plane responsiveness. In
particular the paper describes the architecture behind ICONA and provides some
initial evaluation obtained on a preliminary version of the tool.Comment: Paper submitted to a conferenc
The Abundance of Interstellar Fluorine and Its Implications
We report results from a survey of neutral fluorine (F I) in the interstellar
medium. Data from the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) were used
to analyze 26 lines of sight lying both in the galactic disk and halo,
including lines to Wolf-Rayet stars and through known supernova remnants. The
equivalent widths of fluorine resonance lines at 951.871 A and 954.827 A were
measured or assigned upper limits and combined with a nitrogen curve of growth
to obtain F I column densities. These column densities were then used to
calculate fluorine depletions. Comparisons are made to the previous study of F
I by Federman et al. (2005) and implications for F I formation and depletion
are discussed.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures, Accepted to Ap
Unusually Weak Diffuse Interstellar Bands toward HD 62542
As part of an extensive survey of diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs), we have
obtained optical spectra of the moderately reddened B5V star HD 62542, which is
known to have an unusual UV extinction curve of the type usually identified
with dark clouds. The typically strongest of the commonly catalogued DIBs
covered by the spectra -- those at 5780, 5797, 6270, 6284, and 6614 A -- are
essentially absent in this line of sight, in marked contrast with other lines
of sight of similar reddening. We compare the HD 62542 line of sight with
others exhibiting a range of extinction properties and molecular abundances and
interpret the weakness of the DIBs as an extreme case of deficient DIB
formation in a dense cloud whose more diffuse outer layers have been stripped
away. We comment on the challenges these observations pose for identifying the
carriers of the diffuse bands.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures; aastex; accepted by Ap
Circumstellar grain extinction properties of recently discovered post AGB stars
The circumstellar grains of two hot evolved post asymptotic giant branch (post AGB) stars, HD 89353 and HD 213985 were examined. From ultraviolet spectra, energy balance of the flux, and Kurucz models, the extinction around 2175 A was derived. With visual spectra, an attempt was made to detect 6614 A diffuse band absorption arising from the circumstellar grains so that we could examine the relationship of these features to the infrared features. For both stars, we did not detect any diffuse band absorption at 6614 A, implying the carrier of this diffuse band is not the carrier of the unidentified infrared features not of the 2175 A bump. The linear ultraviolet extinction of the carbon-rich star HD 89353 was determined to continue across the 2175 A region with no sign of the bump; for HD 213985 it was found to be the reverse: a strong, wide bump in the mid-ultraviolet. The 213985 bump was found to be positioned at 2340 A, longward of its usual position in the interstellar medium. Since HD 213985 was determined to have excess carbon, the bump probably arises from a carbonaceous grain. Thus, in view of the ultraviolet and infrared properties of the two post AGB stars, ubiquitous interstellar infrared emission features do not seem to be associated with the 2175 A bump. Instead, the infrared features seem related to the linear ultraviolet extinction component: hydrocarbon grains of radius less than 300 A are present with the linear HD 89353 extinction; amorphous anhydrous carbonaceous grains of radius less than 50 A might cause the shifted ultraviolet extinction bump of HD 213985
Search for Spin-Dependent Short-Range Force Using Optically Polarized He Gas
We propose a new method to detect short-range \textit{P-} and \textit{T-}
violating interactions between nucleons, based on measuring the precession
frequency shift of polarized He nuclei in the presence of an unpolarized
mass. To maximize the sensitivity, a high-pressure He cell with thin glass
windows (250 ) is used to minimize the distance between the mass and
He. The magnetic field fluctuation is suppressed by using the He gas in
a different region of the cell as a magnetometer. Systematic uncertainties from
the magnetic properties of the mass are suppressed by flipping both the
magnetic field and spin directions. Without any magnetic shielding, our result
has already reached the sensitivity of the current best limit. With improvement
in uniformity and stability of the field, we can further improve the
sensitivity by two orders of magnitude over the force range from
m
A method for predicting the stability characteristics of an elastic airplane. Volume 4: FLEXSTAB 1.02.00 demonstration case and results
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