Instrumentation Commons^™

Apollo 17 Lunar Surface Gravimeter: A New Moonquake Catalog And Implications Of Expanding The Passive Seismic Array, Deanna Phillips, Jesse-Lee Dimech, Renee Weber

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Developing An Anti-Coincidence Shielding System For Hard X-Ray Detection In A Balloon-Borne Telescope, Active Luminescence For X-Ray Emission Detection (Alfred) Team

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

The Capabilities Of The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-16 (Goes-16), Brandon M. Kane

Student Works

This report investigates the capability of the new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-16 (GOES-16) satellite to display 16 channels of the electromagnetic spectrum, to produce images at a higher resolution at increased intervals, and to detect and display lightning. This report also discusses the main instrumentation aboard the new geostationary satellite and how it aids in creating accurate data collection, which in turn, produces quicker weather forecasts and warnings. The 16 different channels produced by the Advanced Baseline Imager aboard the new satellite are analyzed in detail as to the functions and wavelengths on which the channels operate. The image resolution …

Book Review: Shoot The Moon: A Complete Guide To Lunar Imaging, T. D. Oswalt

Publications

This document is Dr. Oswalt’s review of Shoot the Moon: a Complete Guide to Lunar Imaging by Dupont-Bloch, Nicolas. Cambridge, 2016, 323 p index, 9781107548442 $39.95, 9781316657867 $32.00.

Physoon: High Altitude Radiation Detection, Everett Cavanaugh, Christopher Helmerich, T. Jemison, J. Kim, Jennifer Miller, Elena Pradhan, Sean Widmier, Cory Wolfe

Research Horizons Day Posters

No abstract provided.

Book Review: From The Realm Of The Nebulae To Populations Of Galaxies: Dialogues On A Century Of Research, Astrophysics And Space Science Library, 435, T. D. Oswalt

Publications

This document is Dr. Oswalt’s review of From the Realm of the Nebulae to Populations of Galaxies : Dialogues on a Century of Research, Astrophysics and Space Science Library, 435. by Mauro D'Onofrio, Roberto Rampazzo, and Simone Zaggia Springer, 2016 785p bibl index afp, 9783319310046 $279.00, 9783319310060 $219.00

Thermal Evolution Of Moon, Arshdeep Singh Gill

Master's Theses

In August, 2014 three experiments were conducted using infrared systems deployed at White Mountain Research center, CA. The data was acquired for the whole month of August. Teams of 3-4 students from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and UC Santa Barbara were stationed at the research center for 2-3 days to operate the equipment. The three experiments were:(1) creating spatial-temporal time series of lunar surface temperatures;(2) identifying atmospheric meteor trails;(3) search for meteor impacts on the Moon surface. Out of the three this thesis focusses on experiment 1 and the results from this experiment could also help with the other …

Quantum Foundations With Astronomical Photons, Calvin Leung

HMC Senior Theses

Bell's inequalities impose an upper limit on correlations between measurements of two-photon states under the assumption that the photons play by a set of local rules rather than by quantum mechanics. Quantum theory and decades of experiments both violate this limit.

Recent theoretical work in quantum foundations has demonstrated that a local realist model can explain the non-local correlations observed in experimental tests of Bell's inequality if the underlying probability distribution of the local hidden variable depends on the choice of measurement basis, or ``setting choice''. By using setting choices determined by astrophysical events in the distant past, it is …

The Space Race Piktograph, Katelyn Flanagan

West Virginia Connection

For this portion of the materials, I included two “Piktographs” for students to use as a resource for their research for the final assignment. The first is one on the contributions specifically from West Virginia to the space race. It includes specific people from West Virginia and their contributions to this portion of our nation’s history. This way students are able to make home connections to West Virginia. The second Piktograph is one specifically on The Green Bank Observatory located in Green Bank, WV. It is home to the first radio telescope, as well as being the first national astronomy …

The Green Bank Observatory Piktograph, Katelyn Flanagan

West Virginia Connection

For this portion of the materials, I included two “Piktographs” for students to use as a resource for their research for the final assignment. The first is one on the contributions specifically from West Virginia to the space race. It includes specific people from West Virginia and their contributions to this portion of our nation’s history. This way students are able to make home connections to West Virginia. The second Piktograph is one specifically on The Green Bank Observatory located in Green Bank, WV. It is home to the first radio telescope, as well as being the first national astronomy …

The Green Bank Observatory And The Space Race - Introduction, Katelyn Flanagan

West Virginia Connection

For this portion of the materials, I included two “Piktographs” for students to use as a resource for their research for the final assignment. The first is one on the contributions specifically from West Virginia to the space race. It includes specific people from West Virginia and their contributions to this portion of our nation’s history. This way students are able to make home connections to West Virginia. The second Piktograph is one specifically on The Green Bank Observatory located in Green Bank, WV. It is home to the first radio telescope, as well as being the first national astronomy …

Data Mining By Grid Computing In The Search For Extrasolar Planets, Oisin Creaner [Thesis]

Doctoral

A system is presented here to provide improved precision in ensemble differential photometry. This is achieved by using the power of grid computing to analyse astronomical catalogues. This produces new catalogues of optimised pointings for each star, which maximise the number and quality of reference stars available. Astronomical phenomena such as exoplanet transits and small-scale structure within quasars may be observed by means of millimagnitude photometric variability on the timescale of minutes to hours. Because of atmospheric distortion, ground-based observations of these phenomena require the use of differential photometry whereby the target is compared with one or more reference stars. …

The Remote Observatories Of The Southeastern Association For Research In Astronomy (Sara), William C. Keel, Terry D. Oswalt, Peter Mack, Gary Henson, Todd Hillwig, Et Al.

Publications

We describe the remote facilities operated by the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA) , a consortium of colleges and universities in the US partnered with Lowell Observatory, the Chilean National Telescope Allocation Committee, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. SARA observatories comprise a 0.96 m telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona; one of 0.6 m aperture on Cerro Tololo, Chile; and the 1 m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain. All are operated using standard VNC or Radmin protocols communicating with on-site PCs. Remote operation offers considerable flexibility in scheduling, allowing long-term …

Improving Cavity Enhanced Spectroscopy Of Molecular Ions In The Mid-Infrared With Up-Conversion Detection And Brewster-Plate Spoilers, Charles R. Markus, Adam J. Perry, James N. Hodges, Benjamin J. Mccall

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

The performance of sensitive spectroscopic methods in the mid-IR is often limited by fringing due to parasitic etalons and the background noise in mid-infrared detectors. In particular, the technique Noise Immune Cavity Enhanced Optical Heterodyne Velocity Modulation Spectroscopy (NICE-OHVMS), which is capable of determining the frequencies of strong rovibrational transitions of molecular ions with sub-MHz uncertainty, needs improved sensitivity in order to probe weaker transitions. In this work, we have implemented up-conversion detection with NICE-OHVMS in the 3.2 - 3.9 μm region to enable the use of faster and more sensitive detectors which cover visible wavelengths. The higher bandwidth enabled …

Joint Hierarchical Models For Sparsely Sampled High-Dimensional Lidar And Forest Variables, Andrew O. Finley, Sudipto Banerjee, Yuzhen Zhou, Bruce D. Cook, Chad Babcock

United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration: Publications

Recent advancements in remote sensing technology, specifically Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors, provide the data needed to quantify forest characteristics at a fine spatial resolution over large geographic domains. From an inferential standpoint, there is interest in prediction and interpolation of the often sparsely sampled and spatially misaligned LiDAR signals and forest variables. We propose a fully process-based Bayesian hierarchical model for above ground biomass (AGB) and LiDAR signals. The processbased framework offers richness in inferential capabilities, e.g., inference on the entire underlying processes instead of estimates only at pre-specified points. Key challenges we obviate include misalignment between the …

High Power Optically Pumped Semiconductor Lasers For Sodium Guidestar Applications, Shawn W. Hackett

Optical Science and Engineering ETDs

Optically pumped semiconductor lasers (OPSLs) are shown to provide a much more compact and less expensive source for illumination of the sodium layer of the mesosphere for use as a sodium laser guidestar via single and two photon excitation schemes. This represents a revolution in laser guidestar technology as the cost, size, and power requirements for a laser guidestar system are shown to have been decreased by an order of magnitude with guidestar performance shown to be similar to previous sources. Sodium laser guidestar sources for broadband simultaneous illumination of multiple lines are developed and simulated. Simulations are then compared …

Earthkam: A Classroom With The Ultimate View!, Jeremy Frost, Tyler Finley, Tim Klug, Angela Burke, Robert Griffin

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Improving The Efficiency Of Gravitational Wave Detection, Jessica Page, Tyson Littenberg

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Designing An Anti-Coincidence Shielding System For The Alfred Project, Active Luminescence For X-Ray Emission Detection (Alfred) Team, Francis Wessling

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Examination Of Resonant Modes In Microwave Cavities, Sophia Schwalbe, Gianpaolo Carosi

Student Works

The Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) looks to detect dark matter axion particles by using microwave cavities in a high magnetic eld to convert the axion's mass energy to a detectable photon. The photon frequency corresponds to the axion mass. Tuning elements in the cavities allow the resonant frequency to be changed but only certain modes couple to the axion. Interactions with additional resonant modes that do not couple to the axion cause unobservable regions in the frequency range. This research investigated new methods to move the additional resonant modes in order to observe these regions.