The twin STEREO spacecraft were launched on October 26, 2006, at 00:52 UT from Kennedy Space Center aboard a Delta 7925 launch vehicle. After a series of highly eccentric Earth orbits with apogees beyond the moon, each spacecraft used close flybys of the moon to escape into orbits about the Sun near 1 AU. Once in heliospheric orbit, one spacecraft trails Earth while the other leads. As viewed from the Sun, the two spacecraft separate at approximately 44 to 45 degrees per year. The purposes of the STEREO Mission are to understand the causes and mechanisms of coronal mass ejection (CME) initiation and to follow the propagation of CMEs through the inner heliosphere to Earth. Researchers will use STEREO measurements to study the mechanisms and sites of energetic particle acceleration and to develop three-dimensional (3-D) time-dependent models of the magnetic topology, temperature, density and velocity of the solar wind between the Sun and Earth. To accomplish these goals, each STEREO spacecraft is equipped with an almost identical set of optical, radio and in situ particles and fields instruments provided by U.S. and European investigators. The SECCHI suite of instruments includes two white light coronagraphs, an extreme ultraviolet imager and two heliospheric white light imagers which track CMEs out to 1 AU. The IMPACT suite of instruments measures in situ solar wind electrons, energetic electrons, protons and heavier ions. IMPACT also includes a magnetometer to measure the in situ magnetic field strength and direction. The PLASTIC instrument measures the composition of heavy ions in the ambient plasma as well as protons and alpha particles. The S/WAVES instrument uses radio waves to track the location of CME-driven shocks and the 3-D topology of open field lines along which flow particles produced by solar flares. Each of the four instrument packages produce a small real-time stream of selected data for purposes of predicting space weather events at Earth. NOAA forecasters at the Space Environment Center and others will use these data in their space weather forecasting and their resultant products will be widely used throughout the world. In addition to the four instrument teams, there is substantial participation by modeling and theory oriented teams. All STEREO data are freely available through individual Web sites at the four Principal Investigator institutions as well as at the STEREO Science Center located at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The STEREO Mission: An Introduction

Astronomical data analysis software and systems

Data Reduction And Error Analysis For The Physical Sciences

Achieving optical gain and/or lasing in silicon has been one of the most challenging goals in silicon-based photonics because bulk silicon is an indirect bandgap semiconductor and therefore has a very low light emission efficiency. Recently, stimulated Raman scattering has been used to demonstrate light amplification and lasing in silicon. However, because of the nonlinear optical loss associated with two-photon absorption (TPA)-induced free carrier absorption (FCA), until now lasing has been limited to pulsed operation. Here we demonstrate a continuous-wave silicon Raman laser. Specifically, we show that TPA-induced FCA in silicon can be significantly reduced by introducing a reverse-biased p-i-n diode embedded in a silicon waveguide. The laser cavity is formed by coating the facets of the silicon waveguide with multilayer dielectric films. We have demonstrated stable single mode laser output with side-mode suppression of over 55 dB and linewidth of less than 80 MHz. The lasing threshold depends on the p-i-n reverse bias voltage and the laser wavelength can be tuned by adjusting the wavelength of the pump laser. The demonstration of a continuous-wave silicon laser represents a significant milestone for silicon-based optoelectronic devices.

/pdf/a-continuous-wave-raman-silicon-laser-1lmeebkhha.pdf

A continuous-wave Raman silicon laser

We must all accept that science is data and that data are science, and thus provide for, and justify the need for the support of, much-improved data curation. (Hanson, Sugden, & Alberts) 
 
Researchers are producing an unprecedented deluge of data by using new methods and instrumentation. Others may wish to mine these data for new discoveries and innovations. However, research data are not readily available as sharing is common in only a few fields such as astronomy and genomics. Data sharing practices in other fields vary widely. Moreover, research data take many forms, are handled in many ways, using many approaches, and often are difficult to interpret once removed from their initial context. Data sharing is thus a conundrum. Four rationales for sharing data are examined, drawing examples from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities: (1) to reproduce or to verify research, (2) to make results of publicly funded research available to the public, (3) to enable others to ask new questions of extant data, and (4) to advance the state of research and innovation. These rationales differ by the arguments for sharing, by beneficiaries, and by the motivations and incentives of the many stakeholders involved. The challenges are to understand which data might be shared, by whom, with whom, under what conditions, why, and to what effects. Answers will inform data policy and practice. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

科研数据共享的挑战 (The Conundrum of Sharing Research Data)

In the frame of the Europlanet-RI program, a prototype Virtual Observatory dedicated to Planetary Science has been set up. Most of the activity was dedicated to the definition of standards to handle data in this field. The aim was to facilitate searches in big archives as well as sparse databases, to make on-line data access and visualization possible, and to allow small data providers to make their data available in an interoperable environment with minimum effort. This system makes intensive use of studies and developments led in Astronomy (IVOA), Solar Science (HELIO), and space archive services (IPDA).
A general standard has been devised to handle the specific complexity of Planetary Science, e.g. in terms of measurement types and coordinate frames [1]. A procedure has been identified to install small data services, and several hands-on sessions have been organized already. A specific client (VESPA) has been developed at VO-Paris (http://vespa.obspm.fr), using a resolver for target names. Selected data can be sent to VO visualization tools such as TOPCAT or Aladin though the SAMP protocol.

The Europlanet H2020 program started in Sept 2015 will provide support to new data services in Europe (30 to 50 expected), and focus on the improvement of the infrastructure. Future steps will include the development of a connection between the VO world and GIS tools, and integration of heliophysics, planetary plasma and reference spectroscopic data.

The Europlanet H2020 project is funded by the European Commission under the H2020 Program, grant 654208.

[1] Erard et al Astron & Comp 2014

VESPA: Developing the Planetary Science Virtual Observatory in H2020

Modern space borne instruments produce huge datasets, especially on long-lived missions such as Mars-Express. This calls for new ways to handle the data, not only to perform mass processing, but also more basically to access them easily and efficiently. Virtual Observatory (VO) techniques developed in Astronomy during the past 15 years can be adapted to address this problem, provided they are enlarged to include specificities of Solar System studies such as coordinate systems, target-related time scales (lo- cal time and season), or measured quantities. An effort to adapt VO techniques to Solar System stud- ies has been started in the frame of the Europlanet program, first in FP7 (2009-2012) as a demonstrator, and now in Horizon2020 (2015-2019) in a more ex- tensive way. In the current program Europlanet 2020, the VESPA activity deals with the infrastructure and implements new data services. VESPA stands for Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access and supports all aspects of Solar System science. Its de- velopments are essentially based on the standards of the IVOA (International Virtual Observatory Alli- ance).
As part of this enlargement, several data services related to the Martian atmosphere were recently de- signed and released, including a set of SPICAM de- rived data and a demonstrator of VO access to the Mars Climate Database. In both cases, vertical pro- files are distributed with the basic VESPA architec- ture. In this abstract, we present the two services and assess this type of access to a simulation service.

https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-01480927/document

Interoperable Mars atmosphere data Services

Study of Saturn electrostatic discharges with high time resolution

We are proposing a new set of tools directed to data providers as well as to users, in order to ease sharing and discovery of low frequency radio astronomy datasets. We focus on ground based planetary radio observations (thus mainly Jupiter radio emissions). The data service we are using is EPN-TAP, a planetary science data access protocol developed by VOParis and CDPP in the frame of the FP7 Europlanet/IDIS (Integrated and Distributed Information Service) project. This protocol is derived from IVOA (International Virtual Observatory Alliance) standards. The Jupiter Routine observations from the Nançay Decameter Array are already shared on the planetary science VO using this protocol. We introduce the VO tools and concepts of interest for the planetary radio astronomy community. We then present the various data formats now used for such data services, as well as their associated metadata. We finally show various prototype tools that make use of this shared datasets.

Sharing Planetary Radio Emission Dataset in the Virtual Observatory

P. Le Sidaner(1), J. Aboudarham (2), M. Birlan (3), J. Berthier (3), D. Briot (4), X. Bonnin (2), B. Cecconi (2) , C. Chauvin (1), S. Erard (2), F. Henry (2), L. Lamy (2), M. Mancini (5), J. Normand (3), M. Popescu (3), F. Roques (2), R. Savalle (1), J. Schneider (5), A. Shih (1), W. Thuillot (3), S. Vinatier (2) (1) DIO-VO, UMS2201 Obs. Paris/CNRS, Fr (pierre.lesidaner@obspm.fr), (2) LESIA, Obs. Paris/CNRS/UPMC/U. ParisDiderot, Fr, (3) IMCCE/Obs. Paris/CNRS, Fr, (4) GEPI, Obs. Paris/CNRS/U. Paris 7, Fr, (5)LUTH, Obs. Paris/CNRS/U. Paris-Diderot, Fr

Baptiste Cecconi

Papers

VESPA: Developing the Planetary Science Virtual Observatory in H2020

Interoperable Mars atmosphere data Services

Study of Saturn electrostatic discharges with high time resolution

Sharing Planetary Radio Emission Dataset in the Virtual Observatory

Planetary Sciences Interoperability at VO Paris Data Centre