Global ETD Search
Search theses and dissertations gathered from participating repositories worldwide. Every result links back to the library that holds it. No account is needed.
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Showing 1 to 19 of 19 for “"stellar occultation"”.
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Stellar occultation investigations of Pluto's atmosphere
… shape of Pluto's atmosphere using data from the occultation of the V=15.7 star P131.1 by Pluto on 2002 Aug 21 (UT). We find that Pluto's atmosphere, as projected onto the sky, is noticeably non-circular. This implies an overall ellipsoidal shape, which could be an indication of high winds and/or …
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Stellar occultation studies of Triton's atmosphere
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 1996.
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Stellar occultation observations of Saturn's upper atmosphere
Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 1997.
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Stellar occultation studies of Saturn's upper atmosphere
… [mu]bar can be studied in detail by observing stellar occultations -- when the planet passes in front of a star -- from ground-based or Earth-orbiting telescopes. We use data from five such occultations: three observed in 1995 by the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) on the Hubble Space Telescope …
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Stellar occultation lightcurve modeling for elliptical occulting bodies
… new method of calculating model lightcurves for stellar occultations by the Jovian planets. We model the occulting planet as a three-dimensional body of non-zero ellipticity, and define two ellipses of intersection with the body which dictate the appearance of the lightcurve. These include the …
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Pluto's atmosphere from the May 22, 2011 stellar occultation
… fitting results from the May 22, 2011 stellar occultation by Pluto. Of the nine sites across the United States that attempted to observe the event, three obtained light curves at the predicted midtime without being clouded out. Simultaneous fitting of these three light curves utilizing …
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Preliminary Design of a Titan-Orbiting Stellar Occultation Mission
… a conceptual mission design for a Titan-orbiting stellar occultation mission. Titan has a significant atmosphere much like Earth's. An improved understanding of Titan's atmosphere could provide valuable information about the evolution of Earth's climate. Titan's atmosphere is known to be in a …
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Stellar occultation studies of Saturn's rings with the Hubble Space Telescope
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 1994.
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Mission Planning and Instrument Design for Stellar Occultation Measurements of Lower Thermospheric Nitric Oxide in the Polar Night
… nitric oxide in the polar night through the stellar occultation technique. This instrument will allow the investigation of how the Sun and Earth systems are related via energetic particle precipitation in the auroral regions. The work performed in this thesis supports the instrument design …
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Planning and Simulating Observations for a Sounding Rocket Experiment to Measure Polar Night Nitric Oxide in the Lower Thermosphere by Stellar Occultation
… Nitric Oxide in the polar night using stellar occultation technique. These objectives are accomplished by planning the geometry, determining the requirements for observations, window for launch and discussing the retrieval technique. The planning is carried out using an approximated (no …
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Astrometria, efemérides e ocultações estelares de satélites irregulares e corpos do sistema solar exterior
… density, atmosphere, rings, etc, it is the stellar occultation technique. This work presents the analysis of two stellar occultations by Ceres, the work on stellar occultations by TNOs and Centaurs developed by our group in collaboration with foreign researchers, the astrometry, ephemeris …
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The Implementation of Stellar Occultation Light Curve Modelling for Arbitrary Planetary Atmospheric Structures and the Analysis of Pluto’s Occultation Light Curves and Its Atmosphere
For decades, the analyses of stellar occultation light curves have been the most efficient method to study atmosphere of small solar system bodies. The variation in stellar flux due to the refraction in planetary atmosphere is directly related to the temperature profile of the planetary atmosphere. …
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Stellar occultations by bodies in the outer solar system at the South African Astronomical Observatory
… of extrasolar planetary formation processes. Stellar occultations by TNOs enable the determination of sizes and shapes with kilometric accuracy (confining albedos, leading us to compositions and densities), the detection of atmospheres down to pressures of a few nanobars, as well as an …
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Investigating spatial variation in the surface and atmosphere of Pluto through stellar occultations and PSF photometry
Stellar occultations provide a high-resolution view of a single chord through Pluto's atmosphere. This thesis presents three projects related to stellar occultation observations of Pluto. The first project concerns the ground testing of the High-speed Imaging Photometer for Occultations (HIPO), a …
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The relationship between Centaur activity and ring formation
… that was discovered around Chariklo during a stellar occultation (Braga-Ribas et al., 2014). A symmetric feature was observed around Chiron during an occultation (Ruprecht et al., 2015), and some interpret this feature to be possible ring material (Ortiz et al., 2015). Similarly, the …
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The use of stellar occultations to study the figures and atmospheres of small bodies in the outer solar system
The methods of analyzing stellar occultations by small bodies in the outer solar system are discussed with examples from Triton, Pluto, and Charon. Simulations were performed characterizing the analysis of multi-chord occultations including: the effects of the direction of residual minimization in …
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The effect of topography on the Martian atmospheric circulation and determining Pluto's atmospheric thermal structure from stellar occultations
… 266-289] was used to least-squares fit Pluto stellar occultation light curve data. This model predicted atmospheric temperature based on surface temperature, surface pressure, surface radius, and methane and carbon monoxide mixing ratios, from which model light curves were able to be …
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Astronomical studies of solar system bodies 2060 Chiron and 1 Ceres
… thesis two separate projects are investigated, a stellar occultation by 2060 Chiron and rotationally resolved spectra of 1 Ceres. On 29 November 2011 UT, 2060 Chiron occulted a 14-mag star; data were successfully obtained at the 3-m IRTF on Mauna Kea and 2-m Faulkes North Telescope at Haleakala. …
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Analysis of light curves from the 2003 Nov 14 occultation by Titan of TYC 1343-1855-1
We observed a stellar occultation by Titan on 2003 November 14 from La Palma Observatory using ULTRACAM with three Sloan filters: u', g', and i' (358, 487, and 758 nm, respectively). The occultation probed latitudes 2°S and 1°N during immersion and emersion, respectively. A prominent central flash …