-------------------------------------- | | | Biuletyn PTA nr 15 | | | -------------------------------------- Biuletyn informacyjny Zarzadu Glownego Polskiego Towarzystwa Astro- nomicznego (Adres kontaktowy: M. Ostrowski, pta@oa.uj.edu.pl , a w bardzo pilnych sprawach: mio@oa.uj.edu.pl ) ======================================================================= Spis tresci: I. Nieoficjalne wyniki konkursu grantow KBN II. SALT i wspolpraca z Poludniowa Afryka III. SALT - konferencja w Toruniu IV. Konferencja ECRS2000 w Lodzi V. Polski "host" bazy danych INES VI. Nowinki naukowe ======================================================================= Uwaga: materialy do biuletynu dotarly w grudniu i styczniu. ======================================================================= I. Nieoficjalne wyniki konkursu grantow KBN Wstepne i BARDZO nieoficjalne wyniki Konkursu XVIII Zespol KBN dokonal podzialu srodkow na projekty zlozone do konca lipca 1999 r. (Konkurs XVIII). Poniewaz Zespol P03 otrzymal w tym konkursie znacznie mniej pieniedzy, niz sie spodziewal i niz otrzymal rok temu, przewodniczacy Zespolu zaprotestowal i otrzymal obietnice rozpatrzenia odwolania, co, byc moze, bedzie skutkowalo zwiekszeniem sumy. Ponizej jest lista kierownikow, ktorzy znalezli sie na rozszerzonej liscie bedacej przedmiotem odwolania. Oznacza to, ze osoby nieobecne na liscie praktycznie napewno nie otrzymaja grantow, natomiast niektore osoby z listy moga nie otrzymac grantow, jezeli nasze odwolanie zostane zalatwione negatywnie, lub czesciowo. Wiecej wiadomosci po 20 stycznia. W nawiasie proponowana przez Zespol suma na caly okres trwania grantu): Astronomia: I. Dymnikowa (9 800), J. Guzik (10 000), W. Kluzniak (175 200), M. Kubiak (344 400), P. Ligeza (9950), T. Michalowski (240 000), A. Schwarzenberg-Czerny (283 500), G. Sitarski (272 900), R. Szczerba (144 300), P. Zycki (120 400) Badania Kosmiczne: M. Giller (228 750), A. Wernik (200 000), M. Rataj (640 000) From: Kazimierz Stepien < kst@astrouw.edu.pl > personal Home Page: http://www.astrouw.edu.pl/~kst/personal.html ======================================================================= II. SALT i wspolpraca z Poludniowa Afryka From: Marek Sarna W dniach 25 - 29 listopada 1999 miala miejsce wizyta Ministra Andrzeja Wiszniewskiego w Republice Poludniowej Afryki. Uczestniczylem w niej jako czlonek oficjalnej polskiej delegacji rzadowej. Celem wizyty bylo podpisanie porozumienia pomiedzy rzadem Rzeczypospoliej Polskiej i rzadem Republiki Poludniowej Afryki o wspolpracy naukowej i technicznej oraz protokolu wykonawczego do tego porozumienia. Nastapilo to 25 listopada 1999 roku w Pretorii. Porozumienie i protokol wykonawczy podpisali prof. Andrzej Wiszniewski i dr Ben S. Ngubane. Jednoczesnie chcialem poinformowac o mozliwosciach relizowania wyjazdow naukowych do RPA. Istnieja dwa rozne pozrozumienia w ramach ktorych zgloszono tematy do wspolpracy z RPA i w ramach ktorych mozna takie wizyty realizowac: 1) Porozumienie miedzy Polska Akademia Nauk a National Research Fundation gdzie zgloszony zostal temat: "Fotometryczne i spektroskopowe obserwacje roznych obiektow astrofizycznych, redukcja danych i wspolpraca w dziedzinie astrofizyki teoretycznej" 2) Umowa miedzy rzadem Rzeczypospolitej Polskie i rzadem Republiki Poludniowej Afryki, podpisana dnia 25.11.1999r w Pretorii gdzie zgloszony zostal temat: "Poludniowo Afrykanski Duzy Teleskop SALT i seminarium w 2000 roku w Polsce" Polska Akademia Nauk w ramach pierwszego tematu na rok 2000 przyznala 26 dni wymiennych dla czterech polskich naukowcow oraz pokrycie kosztow przelotu. Limity przyznane w ramach drugiego tematu beda znane pod koniec lutego 2000 r, poniewaz wtedy uplywa temin skladania wspolnych tematow w RPA. W obu tematach koordynatorem wspolpracy jest ze strony RPA dr Bob Stobie, dyrektor SAAO, a ze strony Polski dr Marek Sarna, dyrektor CAMK PAN. Osobiscie stoje na stanowisku, ze z tygodni wymiennych powini korzystac astronomowie pracujacy w roznych osrodkach astronomicznych w Polsce. Jedyna preferencja, ktora bedzie uwazgledniana, to faktyczna wspolpraca naukowa z kolegami z RPA z polozeniem specjalnego nacisku na realizacje wyjazdow obserwacyjnych. Zwracam rowniez uwage, ze zainteresowani moga zapraszac swoich poludniowo-afrykanskich wspolpracownikow do Polski Zwracam sie z uprzejma prosba do wszystkich zainteresowanych o kontaktowanie sie ze mna pod adresem: sarna@camk.edu.pl ======================================================================= III. SALT - konferencja w Toruniu - 15-16 czerwca 2000 Komunikat numer 1 Centrum Astronomii Uniwersytetu Mikolaja Kopernika w Toruniu, Centrum Astronomiczne im. M.Kopernika PAN, oraz Polskie Towarzystwo Astronomiczne zapraszaja do wziecia udzialu w konferencji pt.: "Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) - nowe narzedzie polskiej astronomii" Konferencja odbedzie sie w Toruniu w dniach 15-16 czerwca 2000 i bedzie prowadzona w jezyku polskim. Wklady wyglosza miedzy innymi: A. Wolszczan, J. Kaluzny, M. Sarna, R.Tylenda, A. Woszczyk. Zgodnie z protokolem wykonawczym do Umowy Miedzyrzadowej pomiedzy Polska a Republika Poludniowej Afryki podpisanym w dniu 25.11.1999 w Pretori rzad polski zobowiazal sie partycypowac w 10% kosztow budowy teleskopu SALT. Piec polskich osrodkow astronomicznych (CAMK Warszawa, UMK Torun, UJ Krakow, UWr Wroclaw i UAM Poznan) zadeklarowlo dodatkowy udzial finansowy w tym przedsiewzieciu. SALT ma byc zbudowany na terenie stacji obserwacyjnej w Sutherland (RPA) i rozpocznie regularne obserwacje w roku 2005. Bedzie to kopia (aczkolwiek nieco zmodyfikowana) teleskopu HET w Teksasie. Konferencja poswiecona bedzie przedstawieniu samego teleskopu SALT i jego instrumentarium, struktury i organizacji miedzynarodowego konsorcjum SALT oraz omowieniu polskiego udzialu w tym przedsiewzieciu. Przewidywana jest tez sesja poswiecona perspektywom naukowym, jakie daje SALT, ze szczegolnym uwzglednieniem specyfiki i mozliwosci teleskopu. W sesji tej uczestnicy konferencji beda mogli przedstawic wlasne zamierzenia co do przyszlych programow badawczych mozliwych do realizacji na teleskopie SALT (w formie referatu badz plakatu). Komitet organizacyjny: A. Niedzielski, R. Tylenda. e-mail: tcfa@astri.uni.torun.pl WWW:http://www.astri.uni.torun.pl/~tcfa/salt_konferencja.html ======================================================================= IV. Konferencja ECRS2000 w Lodzi - 23-28 lipiec 2000 ****************************************** * 17th European Cosmic Ray Symposium * * July 23-28, 2000 * * Lodz, Poland * * Physics Building, University of Lodz * ****************************************** The 17th European Cosmic Ray Symposium will take place from 23 - 28 July 2000 in Lodz, Poland in the Physics Building at the University of Lodz. The Symposium is jointly organized by the University of Lodz, Division of Experimental Physics (ul. Pomorska 149/153, 90-236 Lodz), and by the Andrzej Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies, Cosmic Ray Physics Laboratory (ul. Uniwersytecka 5, 90-950 Lodz). The European Symposium is dedicated to all aspects of the origin, propagation, interaction and detection of cosmic rays from the lowest energies (produced by the Sun) to the extremely high energies. First circular, registration and abstract forms are available via the WWW page of the Local Organizing Committee: http://fizjlk.fic.uni.lodz.pl/ECRS2000.htm Invitated talks for the 17th European Cosmic Ray Symposium: (1) Peter Kiraly: Solar Energetic Particles - What Do They Teach Us About Galactic Cosmic Rays ? (2) Tatiana Roganova: Direct Cosmic Ray Measurements at High Energies. (3) John Kirk: Shock Acceleration of Cosmic Rays - a Critical Review. (4) Michael Hillas: Are Supernova Remnants Sources of Cosmic Rays ? (5) Tadeusz Wibig: High Energy Interaction models and Chemical Composition at Extensive Air Shower energies. (6) Karl-Heinz Kampert: Methods of Determination of the Energy and Mass of Primary Particle at Extensive Air Shower Energies. (7) Danilo Zavrtanik: Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays - Experimental Status. (8) Michal Ostrowski: Mechanisms and Sites for Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray Origin. (9) Arnold. W. Wolfendale: Prospects for Extragalactic Particles from Exotic Processes. (10) John Linsley: Beyond AUGER. (11) Eckart Lorenz: Status and Prospects of TeV Gamma-Ray Astronomy. (12) Karl Mannheim: Bounds on the Neutrino Flux from Cosmic Sources of Relativistic Particles. From: bednar@krysia.uni.lodz.pl ======================================================================= V. Polski "host" bazy danych INES Od konca 1999 roku w Centrum Astronomii UMK dziala polski 'host' bazy danych INES w ktorej znajduje sie ponad 100.000 widm IUE dla blisko 10.000 obiektow. Oficjalne otwarcie nastapi w dniu 14 marca i mniej wiecej wtedy 'national host manager' czyli nizej podpisany rozesle oficjalna informacje do rzesz polskich astronomow oraz przygotuje polskie okienko. INES dostepny jest juz przez www (ines.astri.uni.torun.pl/). From: Andrzej Niedzielski ======================================================================= VI. Nowinki naukowe STARLIGHT REFLECTED FROM AN EXTRASOLAR PLANET has been reported by University of St. Andrews astronomers. Roughly 30 planets have been detected around nearby stars through an indirect method which monitors fluctuations in the stars' positions. More recently the shadow of an extrasolar planet was observed to transit across the face of its star (Update 458). Now light has been detected which apparently comes to us directly from a planet circling the star tau Bootis, some 50 light years away. The main difficulty was of course discerning the reflected light while blocking out the glare of the star itself. The planet seems to be blue-green in color, is twice the size of Jupiter, and 8 times as massive. (Cameron et al., Nature, 16 December 1999.) THE SOLAR WIND DISAPPEARED for a day back on May 10/11, allowing Earth's magnetosphere to balloon out to the orbit of the Moon. Ironically, the greatly lowered solar wind flux of particles and solar magnetic field allowed high-energy electrons from the sun's corona to penetrate directly to our upper atmosphere unadulterate, where the electrons' characteristic x-ray emissions were observed by satellites over the North Pole for the first time. Such a "polar rain" had been predicted years before. Normally the coronal electrons (with energies of tens of keV, corresponding to temperatures of millions of degrees) lose much of their energy through scatterings with other particles on their ride from sun to Earth and in the topsy-turvy trajectories experienced at our magnetosphere. At last week's meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, these results were reported by a number of speakers, including David Chenette of Lockheed, Jack Scudder of the University of Iowa, and Keith Ogilvie of NASA Goddard. (Images available at www- spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/istp/news/9912) SPONGELIKE STRUCTURES NEAR THE SUN'S SURFACE, newly observed by the TRACE satellite (at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths) and the SOHO satellite (in x rays), lie between the 10,000-K chromosphere and the corona at a temperature of several million K. These filamentary structures (dubbed "solar moss" by Lockheed scientists reporting at the AGU meeting) are typically 6000-12,000 miles in size and about 1000-1500 miles above the photosphere, occur at various places around the sun's surface, usually near the footprint of huge coronal loops. The moss blobs seem to be stable for hours but can also change brightness over periods as short as 30 seconds. Thomas Berger of Lockheed said that the new structures may provide information on how the corona gets so hot, an issue that remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of solar physics. COSMIC RAYS OBSERVED BY GRAVITY-WAVE DETECTOR. The NAUTILUS detector at the Frascati Laboratory in Italy consists of a 2300-kg aluminum cylinder cooled to a temperature of 0.1 K. The plan is that a passing gravitational wave (broadcast, say, by the collision of two neutron stars) would excite a noticeable vibration in the cylinder. NAUTILUS has not yet recorded any gravitational waves, but scientists have now witnessed the cylinder vibrated by energetic particle showers initiated when cosmic rays strike the atmosphere. The signal generated by the rays is believable because conventional cosmic- ray detectors surrounding the bar also lit up when they were struck by the particles. In effect the detector is able to discern a mechanical vibration as small as 10^-18 meters, corresponding to an energy deposit as small as 10^-6 eV. (Astone et al., Physical Review Letters, 3 January 2000; Select Article. Contact Giuseppina Modestino, modestino@lnf.infn.it, 011-39-694-032- 756.) THE X-RAY BACKGROUND, the glow of x rays seen in all directions in space, has now largely been resolved into emissions from discrete sources by the Chandra X-Ray Telescope, ending the notion that the x rays come from distant hot gas. Previously only about 20-30% of the x-ray background had been ascribed to point sources (by such telescopes as ASCA). Chandra was launched in July 1999 and put in an elliptical orbit. With its high angular resolution and acute sensitivity it could tell apart x- ray objects (many of them thought to be accretion disks around black holes) that before had been blurred into a continuous x-ray curtain. (Of course, now that the background has been resolved into points it ceases to be a background.) Richard Mushotzky of Goddard Space Flight Center reported these Chandra results at last week's meeting in Atlanta of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Resolving the x-ray background was not all. Mushotzky added that the Chandra survey had revealed the existence of two categories of energetic galaxies that had been imaged only poorly or not at all by optical telescopes. He referred to one category as "veiled galactic nuclei," objects (with a redshift of about 1) bright in x rays but obscured by dust at optical wavelengths. The other category was "ultra-faint galaxies." One interpretation of these galaxies is that optical emission is suppressed owing to absorption over what could be a very long pathway to Earth. Mushotzky speculated that such high redshift (z greater than 5) galaxies could be the most distant, and hence earliest, objects ever identified. The XMM x-ray telescope, just launched, should provide complementary information in the form of high-precision spectra (from which redshifts are derived) of the distant objects. OTHER CHANDRA RESULTS at the meeting included the mapping of a thousand x-ray stars in the Orion Nebula portion of our galaxy 1500 light years away, making this the highest density of x-ray sources yet recorded. Gordon Garmire of Penn State spoke about this finding as well as about the effort to find x-ray counterparts for objects cataloged in the Hubble Deep Field image made with visible light; some tentative matches were made. Meanwhile, Frederick Baganoff of MIT reported that Chandra's inspection of the center of the Milky Way revealed what might be the first recorded x-ray signal from the vicinity of the massive (2 million solar mass) black hole residing at or near the radio-bright object called Sagittarius A*. In x rays this object proved to be fainter than expected by a factor of 5. The supermassive black hole at the heart of our sister spiral galaxy, Andromeda, also is much cooler than expected. According to Stephen Murray from Harvard-Smithsonian, the measured temperature was only a few million K, compared to temperatures of tens of millions for much more modest x-ray stars in the same galaxy. None of this fits with theories of supermassive black holes. Finally, Claude Canizares of MIT summarized Chandra observations of supernova remnant E0102-72, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud. E0102-72 is the leftover from an explosion 1000 years ago of a huge star of 15-20 solar masses. A diffraction grating on the telescope was used to spread out incoming x rays into a spectrum which could be scanned for the presence of specific elements in the stellar debris. Canizares estimated that as much as 10 solar masses' worth of oxygen was present in the wreckage of the older star, enough to furnish thousands of solar systems like ours with the breathable element needed for much of life on Earth. SOLITARY, WANDERING BLACK HOLES, unheralded by any bright accretion disk or rapidly orbiting stars or gas, have been detected through the process of gravitational microlensing. The Massive Compact Halo Object (MACHO) collaboration regularly views millions of stars in the direction of the dense bulge of our galaxy hoping to observe, every now and then, stars brightening courtesy of the lensing caused by the passage of some nonluminous object (hovering in the galaxy's halo) between us and the star. The brightening can last as short as two days or as long as 1000. Longer durations suggest either large or very slow lensing objects. David Bennett of Notre Dame reported at the AAS meeting on two such long-duration events in which the mass of the lens was calculated to be roughly 6 solar masses, too heavy to be a neutron star and more likely to be a black hole. Bennett speculates that the lone-wolf black holes form from supernova collapse and might be as common as neutron stars in the galaxy. =======================================================================