SunCET: The Sun Coronal Ejection Tracker Concept

The Sun Coronal Ejection Tracker (SunCET) is an extreme ultraviolet imager and spectrograph instrument concept for tracking coronal mass ejections through the region where they experience the majority of their acceration: the difficult-to-observe middle corona. It contains a wide field of view (0--4~\Rs) imager and a 1~\AA\ spectral-resolution-irradiance spectrograph spanning 170--340~\AA. It leverages new detector technology to read out different areas of the detector with different integration times, resulting in what we call ``simultaneous high dynamic range", as opposed to the traditional high dynamic range camera technique of subsequent full-frame images that are then combined in post-processing. This allows us to image the bright solar disk with short integration time, the middle corona with a long integration time, and the spectra with their own, independent integration time. Thus, SunCET does not require the use of an opaque or filtered occulter. SunCET is also compact --- $\sim$15 $\times$ 15 $\times$ 10~cm in volume --- making it an ideal instrument for a CubeSat or a small, complimentary addition to a larger mission.

Integration of Freeplay-Induced Limit Cycles Based On a State Space Iterating Scheme

Time integration is commonly used to obtain accurate system responses, such as the limit cycle oscillations (LCOs) for an aeroelastic system with freeplay. However, the integrations that start with various initial conditions (I.C.s) are usually studied case by case, so only a few system states can possibly be focused on. This paper proposes a state space iterating (SSI) scheme to find LCO solutions using time integration by using another method. First, a large number of arbitrary I.C. cases are used for time integrations, but only a very short integration time is required for each I.C. case. Second, system behaviors are depicted visually through a method that combines a modified Poincaré map and Lorenz map, in which the LCO solutions are found as fixed points via visual inspections. To verify the SSI scheme’s ability to find LCOs, a typical plunge–pitch wing section is established numerically. Time integrations with both the classic scheme and the proposed SSI scheme are carried out. The LCO results of the SSI scheme are well-aligned with those from the classic scheme. The SSI scheme visualizes the patterns of system responses using arbitrary I.C. cases and analyzes the LCO stability, which provides more mathematical insights into an aeroelastic system with freeplay.

Star Scheduling Mode—A New Observing Strategy for Monitoring Weak Southern Radio Sources with the AuScope VLBI Array

The International Celestial Reference Frame suffers from significantly less observations in the southern hemisphere compared to the northern one. One reason for this is the historically low number of very long baseline interferometry radio telescopes in the south. The AuScope very long baseline interferometry array with three new telescopes on the Australian continent and an identical antenna in New Zealand were built to address this issue. While the overall number of observations in the south has greatly improved since then, a closer look reveals that this improvement is only true for strong radio sources (source flux densities >0.6 Jy). The new array of small very long baseline interferometry antennas has a relatively low baseline sensitivity so that only strong sources can be observed within a short integration time. A new observing strategy, the star scheduling mode, was developed to enable efficient observations of weak sources during geodetic sessions, through the addition of a single more sensitive antenna to the network. This scheduling mode was implemented in the Vienna very long baseline interferometry Software and applied in four 24-h sessions in 2016. These observations provide updated positions and source flux densities for 42 weak southern radio sources and significantly reduce the formal uncertainties for these sources. The star scheduling mode now allows the AuScope very long baseline interferometry array to undertake greater responsibility in monitoring sources in the southern sky, without significantly weakening the session for geodetic purposes.

Iterative inversion of global magnetospheric ion distributions using energetic neutral atom (ENA) images recorded by the NUADU/TC2 instrument

A method has been developed for extracting magnetospheric ion distributions from Energetic Neutral Atom (ENA) measurements made by the NUADU instrument on the TC-2 spacecraft. Based on a constrained linear inversion, this iterative technique is suitable for use in the case of an ENA image measurement, featuring a sharply peaked spatial distribution. The method allows for magnetospheric ion distributions to be extracted from a low-count ENA image recorded over a short integration time (5 min). The technique is demonstrated through its application to a set of representative ENA images recorded in energy Channel~2 (hydrogen: 50–81 keV, oxygen: 138–185 keV) of the NUADU instrument during a geomagnetic storm. It is demonstrated that this inversion method provides a useful tool for extracting ion distribution information from ENA data that are characterized by high temporal and spatial resolution. The recovered ENA images obtained from inverted ion fluxes match most effectively the measurements made at maximum ENA intensity.

Optical Detection of Large Meteoroids in Space

CCD sensors placed across the focal plane of large Schmidt telescopes have great potential for detecting and measuring the very low flux in space of meteoroids with diameters larger than 1 meter. With the Palomar “Big Schmidt”, a detection rate of 1.4 per hour is obtained for meteoroids between 0.6 and 200 meters in diameter. For the Baker-Nunn “Satellite Tracking Camera”, the corresponding rate is about 0.8 per hour. The key to obtaining such high detection rates derives from approximately setting the sensor integration time equal to the time it takes a meteoroid to cross a pixel field of view. This minimizes signal to noise problems and is accomplished, in practice, by multiple summing of short integration time data records to obtain data records of longer effective integration times.