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At least 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2005

Forecasting of Storm Surge Floods Using ADCIRC and Optimized DEMs

Increasing the accuracy of storm surge flood forecasts is essential for improving preparedness for hurricanes and other severe storms and, in particular, for optimizing evacuation scenarios. An interactive database, developed by WorldWinds, Inc., contains atlases of storm surge flood levels for the Louisiana/Mississippi gulf coast region. These atlases were developed to improve forecasting of flooding along the coastline and estuaries and in adjacent inland areas. Storm surge heights depend on a complex interaction of several factors, including: storm size, central minimum pressure, forward speed of motion, bottom topography near the point of landfall, astronomical tides, and most importantly, maximum wind speed. The information in the atlases was generated in over 100 computational simulations, partly by use of a parallel-processing version of the ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) model. ADCIRC is a nonlinear computational model of hydrodynamics, developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the US Navy, as a family of two- and three-dimensional finite element based codes. It affords a capability for simulating tidal circulation and storm surge propagation over very large computational domains, while simultaneously providing high-resolution output in areas of complex shoreline and bathymetry. The ADCIRC finite-element grid for this project covered the Gulf of Mexico and contiguous basins, extending into the deep Atlantic Ocean with progressively higher resolution approaching the study area. The advantage of using ADCIRC over other storm surge models, such as SLOSH, is that input conditions can include all or part of wind stress, tides, wave stress, and river discharge, which serve to make the model output more accurate.

Valenti, Elizabeth↗
NASA NTRS2005

Custom Sky-Image Mosaics from NASA's Information Power Grid

yourSkyG is the second generation of the software described in yourSky: Custom Sky-Image Mosaics via the Internet (NPO-30556), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 27, No. 6 (June 2003), page 45. Like its predecessor, yourSkyG supplies custom astronomical image mosaics of sky regions specified by requesters using client computers connected to the Internet. Whereas yourSky constructs mosaics on a local multiprocessor system, yourSkyG performs the computations on NASA s Information Power Grid (IPG), which is capable of performing much larger mosaicking tasks. (The IPG is high-performance computation and data grid that integrates geographically distributed 18 NASA Tech Briefs, September 2005 computers, databases, and instruments.) A user of yourSkyG can specify parameters describing a mosaic to be constructed. yourSkyG then constructs the mosaic on the IPG and makes it available for downloading by the user. The complexities of determining which input images are required to construct a mosaic, retrieving the required input images from remote sky-survey archives, uploading the images to the computers on the IPG, performing the computations remotely on the Grid, and downloading the resulting mosaic from the Grid are all transparent to the user

Jacob, Joseph↗
NASA NTRS2005

Virtual Observatory Science Applications

Many Virtual-Observatory-based applications are now available to astronomers for use in their research. These span data discovery, access, visualization and analysis. Tools can quickly gather and organize information from sites around the world to help in planning a response to a gamma-ray burst, help users pick filters to isolate a desired feature, make an average template for z=2 AGN, select sources based upon information in many catalogs, or correlate massive distributed databases. Using VO protocols, the reach of existing software tools and packages can be greatly extended, allowing users to find and access remote information almost as conveniently as local data. The talk highlights just a few of the tools available to scientists, describes how both large and small scale projects can use existing tools, and previews some of the new capabilities that will be available in the next few years.

McGlynn, Tom↗
NASA NTRS2006

Forecasting of Storm-Surge Floods Using ADCIRC and Optimized DEMs

Increasing the accuracy of storm-surge flood forecasts is essential for improving preparedness for hurricanes and other severe storms and, in particular, for optimizing evacuation scenarios. An interactive database, developed by WorldWinds, Inc., contains atlases of storm-surge flood levels for the Louisiana/Mississippi gulf coast region. These atlases were developed to improve forecasting of flooding along the coastline and estuaries and in adjacent inland areas. Storm-surge heights depend on a complex interaction of several factors, including: storm size, central minimum pressure, forward speed of motion, bottom topography near the point of landfall, astronomical tides, and, most importantly, maximum wind speed. The information in the atlases was generated in over 100 computational simulations, partly by use of a parallel-processing version of the ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) model. ADCIRC is a nonlinear computational model of hydrodynamics, developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the US Navy, as a family of two- and three-dimensional finite-element-based codes. It affords a capability for simulating tidal circulation and storm-surge propagation over very large computational domains, while simultaneously providing high-resolution output in areas of complex shoreline and bathymetry. The ADCIRC finite-element grid for this project covered the Gulf of Mexico and contiguous basins, extending into the deep Atlantic Ocean with progressively higher resolution approaching the study area. The advantage of using ADCIRC over other storm-surge models, such as SLOSH, is that input conditions can include all or part of wind stress, tides, wave stress, and river discharge, which serve to make the model output more accurate. To keep the computational load manageable, this work was conducted using only the wind stress, calculated by using historical data from Hurricane Camille, as the input condition for the model. Hurricane storm-surge simulations were performed on an eight-node Linux computer cluster. Each node contained dual 2-GHz processors, 2GB of memory, and a 40GB hard drive. The digital elevation model (DEM) for this region was specified using a combination of Navy data (over water), NOAA data (for the coastline), and optimized Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar data (over land). This high-resolution topographical data of the Mississippi coastal region provided the ADCIRC model with improved input with which to calculate improved storm-surge forecasts.

Valenti, Elizabeth↗
NASA NTRS1987

Catalog of infrared observations. Part 2: Appendixes

The Catalog of Infrared Observations (CIO) is a compilation of infrared astronomical observational data obtained from an extensive literature search of astronomical journals and major astronomical catalogs and surveys. The literature searches are complete for years 1965 to 1986. Supporting appendixes are published in this part. The appendices include an atlas of infrared source positions, two bibliographies of infrared literature upon which the search was based, and, keyed to the main Catalog listings (organized alphabetically by first author, and by date), an atlas of infrared spectral ranges, and IRAS data for the CIO sources. The complete CIO database is available to qualified users in printed microfiche and magnetic tape formats.

Gezari, Daniel Y.↗
DOE OSTI2017

Framework for Analysis and Visualization of Simulation Data (VizAly)

As supercomputing resources increase, cosmological scientists are able to run more detailed and larger simulations generating massive amounts of data. Analyzing these simulations with an available open-source toolkit is important for collaborative Department of Energy scientific discovery across labs, universities, and other partners. Developed software as a part of this collection include: comparing data with other existing simulations, verifying and validating results with observation databases, new halo finder algorithms, and using analytical tools to get insights into the physics of the cosmological universe. The goal of this software project is to provide a set of open-source libraries, tools, and packages for large-scale cosmology that allows scientists to visualize, analyze, and compare large-scale simulation and observational data sets. Developed software will provide a variety of methods for processing, visualization, and analysis of astronomical observation and cosmological simulation data. These tools are intended for deployment on multiple scientific computing platforms, including but not limited to personal computers, cloud computing, experimental sites (telescopes) and high performance supercomputers.

Wendelberger, Joanne↗
DOE OSTI2016

Extended relativistic configuration interaction and many-body perturbation calculations of spectroscopic data for the N ≤ 6 configurations in Ne-like ions between Cr xv and Kr xxvii

Level energies, wavelengths, electric dipole, magnetic dipole, electric quadrupole, and magnetic quadrupole transition rates, oscillator strengths, and line strengths from combined relativistic configuration interaction and many-body perturbation calculations are reported for the 201 fine-structure states of the 2s{sup 2}2p{sup 6}, 2s{sup 2}2p{sup 5}3l, 2s2p{sup 6}3l, 2s{sup 2}2p{sup 5}4l, 2s2p{sup 6}4l, 2s{sup 2}2p{sup 5}5l, and 2s{sup 2}2p{sup 5}6l configurations in all Ne-like ions between Cr xv and Kr xxvii. Calculated level energies and transition data are compared with experiments from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and CHIANTI databases, and other recent benchmark calculations. The mean energy difference with the NIST experiments is only 0.05%. The present calculations significantly increase the amount of accurate spectroscopic data for the n > 3 states in a number of Ne-like ions of astrophysical interest. A complete data set should be helpful for analyzing new observations from solar and other astrophysical sources, and is also likely to be useful for modeling and diagnosing a variety of plasmas, including astronomical and fusion plasma.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1993

Far infrared supplement. Third edition: Catalog of infrared observations (lambda greater than or equal to 4.6 micrometers)

The Far Infrared Supplement contains a subset of the data in the full Catalog of Infrared Observations (all observations at wavelengths greater than 4.6 microns). The Catalog of Infrared Observations (CIO), NASA RP-1294, is a compilation of infrared astronomical observational data obtained from an extensive literature search of scientific journals and major astronomical catalogs and surveys. The literature search is complete for years 1965 through 1990 in this third edition. The catalog contains about 210,000 observations of roughly 20,000 individual sources, and supporting appendices. The expanded third edition contains coded IRAS 4-band data for all CIO sources detected by IRAS. The appendices include an atlas of infrared source positions (also included in this volume), two bibliographies of catalog listings, and an atlas of infrared spectral ranges. The complete CIO database is available to qualified users in printed, microfiche, and magnetic tape formats.

Gezari, Daniel Y.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Catalog of Infrared Observations, Third Edition

The Far Infrared Supplement contains a subset of the data in the full Catalog of Infrared Observations (all observations at wavelengths greater than 4.6 microns). The Catalog of Infrared Observations (CIO), NASA RP-1294, is a compilation of infrared astronomical observational data obtained from an extensive literature search of scientific journals and major astronomical catalogs and surveys. The literature search is complete for years 1965 through 1990 in this Third Edition. The Catalog contains about 210,000 observations of roughly 20,000 individual sources and supporting appendices. The expanded Third Edition contains coded IRAS 4-band data for all CIO sources detected by IRAS. The appendices include an atlas of infrared source positions (also included in this volume), two bibliographies of Catalog listings, and an atlas of infrared spectral ranges. The complete CIO database is available to qualified users in printed, microfiche, and magnetic-tape formats.

Gezari, Daniel Y.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Final Summary of Research Report to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Cosmochemistry Program

The discovery of presolar grains in meteorites is one of the most exciting recent developments in meteoritics. Six types of presolar grain have been discovered: diamond, Sic, graphite, Si3N4, Al2O3 and MgAl2O4. These grains have been identified as presolar because their isotopic compositions are very different from those of Solar System materials. Comparison of their isotopic compositions with astronomical observations and theoretical models indicates most of the grains formed in the envelopes of highly evolved stars. They are, therefore, a new source of information with which to test astrophysical models of the evolution of these stars. In fact, because several elements can often be measured in the same grain, including elements that are not measurable spectroscopically in stars, the grain data provide some very stringent constraints for these models. Our primary goal is to create large, unbiased, multi-isotope databases of single presolar Sic, Si,N,, oxide and graphite grains in meteorites, as well as any new presolar grain types that are identified in the future. These will be used to: (i) test stellar and nucleosynthetic models, (ii) constrain the galactic chemical evolution (GCE) paths of the isotopes of Si, Ti, 0 and Mg, (iii) establish how many stellar sources contributed to the Solar System, (iv) constrain relative dust production rates of various stellar types and (v) assess how representative of galactic dust production the record in meteorites is. The primary tool for this project is a highly automated grain analysis system we have developed for the Carnegie 6f ion probe.

O'D.Alexander, Conel↗
NASA NTRS2003

Final Summary of Research Report to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Cosmochemistry Program

The discovery of presolar grains in meteorites is one of the most exciting recent developments in meteoritics. Six types of presolar grain have been discovered: diamond, Sic, graphite, Si3N4, Al2O3 and MgAl2O4. These grains have been identified as presolar because their isotopic compositions are very different from those of Solar System materials. Comparison of their isotopic compositions with astronomical observations and theoretical models indicates most of the grains formed in the envelopes of highly evolved stars. They are, therefore, a new source of information with which to test astrophysical models of the evolution of these stars. In fact, because several elements can often be measured in the same grain, including elements that are not measurable spectroscopically in stars, the grain data provide some very stringent constraints for these models. Our primary goal is to create large, unbiased, multi-isotope databases of single presolar Sic, Si,N,, oxide and graphite grains in meteorites, as well as any new presolar grain types that are identified in the future. These will be used to: (i) test stellar and nucleosynthetic models, (ii) constrain the galactic chemical evolution (GCE) paths of the isotopes of Si, Ti, O and Mg, (iii) establish how many stellar sources contributed to the Solar System, (iv) constrain relative dust production rates of various stellar types and (v) assess how representative of galactic dust production the record in meteorites is. The primary tool for this project is a highly automated grain analysis system on the Carnegie 6f ion probe.

O'D. Alexander, Conel↗
NASA NTRS2004

Research Report to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Cosmochemistry Program

The discovery of presolar grains in meteorites is one of the most exciting recent developments in meteoritics. Six types of presolar grain have been discovered: diamond, Sic, graphite, Si3N4, Al2O3 and MgAl2O4 (NIITLER, 2003). These grains have been identified as presolar because their isotopic compositions are very different from those of Solar System materials. Comparison of their isotopic compositions with astronomical observations and theoretical models indicates that most of the grains formed in the envelopes of highly evolved stars. They are, therefore, a new source of information with which to test astrophysical models of the evolution of these stars. In fact, because several elements can often be measured in the same grain, including elements that are not measurable spectroscopically in stars, the grain data provide some very stringent constraints for these models. Our primary goal is to create large, unbiased, multi-isotope databases of single presolar Sic, Si3N4, oxide and graphite grains in meteorites, as well as any new presolar grain types that are identified in the future. These will be used to: (i) test stellar and nucleosynthetic models, (ii) constrain the galactic chemical evolution (GCE) paths of the isotopes of Si, Ti, O and Mg, (iii) establish how many stellar sources contributed to the Solar System, (iv) constrain relative dust production rates of various stellar types and (v) assess how representative of galactic dust production the record in meteorites is. The primary tool for this project is a highly automated grain analysis system on the Carnegie 6f ion probe. This proposal was part of a long-standing research effort that is still ongoing.

Alexander, Conel O'D.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Distribution to the Astronomy Community of the Compressed Digitized Sky Survey

The Space Telescope Science Institute has compressed an all-sky collection of ground-based images and has printed the data on a two volume, 102 CD-ROM disc set. The first part of the survey (containing images of the southern sky) was published in May 1994. The second volume (containing images of the northern sky) was published in January 1995. Software which manages the image retrieval is included with each volume. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) is handling the distribution of the lOx compressed data and has sold 310 sets as of October 1996. ASP is also handling the distribution of the recently published 100x version of the northern sky survey which is publicly available at a low cost. The target markets for the 100x compressed data set are the amateur astronomy community, educational institutions, and the general public. During the next year, we plan to publish the first version of a photometric calibration database which will allow users of the compressed sky survey to determine the brightness of stars in the images.

Postman, Marc↗
NASA NTRS2003

Development and Operations of the Astrophysics Data System

The ADS was represented at the AAS meeting with 3 poster papers and a demonstration booth. We have setup a mirror site of the Vizier data base system at the CDS. functionality of the ADC at Goddard. This will replace the Preparations for the APS and LPSC meetings in March started. We will have demonstrations at both meetings. Preparations for the APS and LPSC meetings in March continued. We will have demonstrations at both meetings. The ADS was represented with a poster at the joint AGUEGU meeting in Nice, France. Discussions about the on-going collaboration between the ADS and the CDS in Strasbourg, France were held in Strasbourg. The ADS was invited to organize a session about the ADS and its mirror sites at the next United Nations Workshop on Basic Space Sciences in the Developing World. Efforts are under way to enter the tables of contents of all conference proceedings in the SA0 library into the ADS. This requires copying the tables of contents from all volumes in the library and have them typed in. This will greatly enhance the coverage of the literature in the ADS. We started the development of a search system for the full text of all scanned material in the ADS. This will eventually allow our users search capabilities that so far do not exist in any form. I order to enable the full text searching, we have purchased OCR software and are in the process of OCRing the scanned pages in the ADS. Efforts are in progress to handle the inclusion of data set identifiers in article manuscripts. The ADS will be the central system that will allow the journals to verify data set identifiers. The "master verifier" has been implemented in prototype form at the ADS. We started to include more journals in Geosciences/Geophysics in the ADS. The Royal astronomical Society has decided to archive their on-line journals in the ADS three years after publication. We have started to process these older on-line articles in order to archive them in the ADS. Our mirror site in Korea now has a full article mirror. We developed XML output capability in the ADS. This will make it easier to exchange data with other data systems. We started the development of new indexing software that will eventually reduce the indexing time for a database from days to hours or less. The ADS was represented at the IAU General Assembly with a poster. Discussions with the IAU management were held about extending the ADS IAU collaborations.

Murray, Stephen S.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Selecting Data from a Star Catalog

MCDUMP is a computer program that selects data from the SKYMAP SKY2000 Master Star Catalog a database about 150 MB in size, stored on a computer hard drive. The database describes about 300,000 stars, each by means of a 500-byte entry. MCDUMP reads all 300,000 entries, then generates an output file that comprises a subset of entries selected according to one or more criteria entered by the user. Examples of criteria that could be entered include: location in a selected portion of the sky; constancy or a specified degree of variability of brightness; absence of nearby, bright companion stars; a particular surface temperature; and brightness sufficient to enable detection by a specified astronomical instrument. The output of MCDUMP can be in the form of either a single 520-column file or multiple files that contain fewer columns to facilitate printing. MCDUMP has been configured and tested for use under the HP-UX 10.20 operating system (a Hewlett-Packard version of the UNIX operating system). It should also be possible to adapt MCDUMP to other versions of UNIX.

Tracewell, David A.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Powerful Radio Sources in the Southern Sky. I. Optical Identifications

Since the early sixties, our view of radio galaxies and quasars has been drastically shaped by discoveries made thanks to observations of radio sources listed in the Third Cambridge Catalog and its revised version (3CR). However, the largest fraction of data collected to date on 3CR sources was performed with relatively old instruments, rarely repeated and/or updated. Importantly, the 3CR contains only objects located in the Northern Hemisphere, thus having limited access to new and innovative astronomical facilities. To mitigate these limitations, we present a new catalog of powerful radio sources visible from the Southern Hemisphere, extracted from the GLEAM 4 Jy (G4Jy) catalog and based on equivalent selection criteria as the 3CR. This new catalog, named G4Jy-3CRE, where the E stands for “equivalent,” lists a total of 264 sources at decl. below -5° and with 9 Jy limiting sensitivity at ~178 MHz. We explored archival radio maps obtained with different surveys and compared them with optical images available in the Pan-STARRS, DES, and DSS databases to search for optical counterparts of their radio cores. We compared mid-infrared counterparts, originally associated in the G4Jy, with the optical ones identified here, and we present results of a vast literature search carried out to collect redshift estimates for all G4Jy-3CRE sources resulting in a total of 145 reliable z measurements.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS2002

Microwave, Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far Infrared Spectral Databases

The spectrum of most known astrophysical molecules is derived from transitions between a few hundred to a few hundred thousand energy levels populated at room temperature. In the microwave and millimeter wave regions. spectroscopy is almost always performed with traditional microwave techniques. In the submillimeter and far infrared microwave technique becomes progressively more technologically challenging and infrared techniques become more widely employed as the wavelength gets shorter. Infrared techniques are typically one to two orders of magnitude less precise but they do generate all the strong features in the spectrum. With microwave technique, it is generally impossible and rarely necessary to measure every single transition of a molecular species, so careful fitting of quantum mechanical Hamiltonians to the transitions measured are required to produce the complete spectral picture of the molecule required by astronomers. The fitting process produces the most precise data possible and is required in the interpret heterodyne observations. The drawback of traditional microwave technique is that precise knowledge of the band origins of low lying excited states is rarely gained. The fitting of data interpolates well for the range of quantum numbers where there is laboratory data, but extrapolation is almost never precise. The majority of high resolution spectroscopic data is millimeter or longer in wavelength and a very limited number of molecules have ever been studied with microwave techniques at wavelengths shorter than 0.3 millimeters. The situation with infrared technique is similarly dire in the submillimeter and far infrared because the black body sources used are competing with a very significant thermal background making the signal to noise poor. Regardless of the technique used the data must be archived in a way useful for the interpretation of observations.

Pearson, J. C.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Laser Induced Fluorescence Spectroscopy of Neutral and Ionized Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in the Cosmic Simulation Chamber

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules are considered the best carriers to account for the ubiquitous infrared emission bands. PAHs have also been proposed as candidates to explain the diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs), a series of absorption features seen on the interstellar extinction curve and are plausible carriers for the extended red emission (ERE), a photoluminescent process associated with a wide variety of interstellar environments. Extensive efforts have been devoted over the past two decades to characterize the physical and chemical properties of PAH molecules and ions in space. Absorption spectra of PAH molecules and ions trapped in solid matrices have been compared to the DIBs. Absorption spectra of several cold, isolated gas-phase PAHs have also been measured under experimental conditions that mimic the interstellar conditions. The purpose of this study is to provide a new dimension to the existing spectroscopic database of neutral and single ionized PAHs that is largely based on absorption spectra by adding emission spectroscopy data. The measurements are based on the laser induced fluorescence (LIF) technique and are performed with the Pulsed Discharge Nozzle (PDN) of the COSmIC laboratory facility at NASA Ames laboratory. The PDN generates a plasma in a free supersonic jet expansion to simulate the physical and the chemical conditions in interstellar environments. We focus, here, on the fluorescence spectra of large neutral PAHs and their cations where there is a lack of fluorescence spectroscopy data. The astronomical implications of the data (e.g., ERE) are examined.

Laboratory↗