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Morgan, T.

Publications and source records attributed to Morgan, T..

13 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

NSTX-U liquid metal core-edge facility (LMCE)

NSTX-U/LMCE will provide a unique and world-leading research facility to address the primary challenge to delivering economic and timely magnetic fusion energy, namely the need to develop a power and particle exhaust and first-wall system that can withstand very high edge heat fluxes, maximize energy confinement, and avoid the production of large masses of solid eroded first-wall material. The NSTX-U/LMCE facility will assess the ability of liquid metals (LMs) – especially liquid lithium – to provide a new boundary condition for magnetic fusion systems, to extend the lifetime of the plasma facing components (PFCs) and improve core plasma confinement. Such capability is needed to establish the basis for next-step fusion facilities including fusion pilot plants, and to maintain U.S. world leadership in core-edge integration research. NSTX-U/LMCE will leverage the ability to generate very high divertor perpendicular heat flux q⊥ ~ 100MW/m 2 , extensive diagnostics, and liquid-metal-applicable infrastructure of NSTX-U. NSTX-U/LMCE will provide access to a high-confinement plasma core with majority self-driven plasma current, the flexibility to test a range of liquid metal divertor concepts, access to a range of separatrix collisionalities (from high to very low), and the ability to controllably vary the first-wall temperature to vary the plasma- wall interaction physics on liquid lithium components. Further, NSTX-U/LMCE will utilize more reactor-relevant high-Z refractory-metal PFC substrates. With these capabilities the NSTX-U/LMCE facility will explore the full continuum of core-edge solutions ranging from high core radiated power, to conditions with radiative losses concentrated in the scrape-off layer (SOL), and ultimately low recycling conditions. The low collisionality SOL that may be accessible in the low recycling regime is relatively unexplored and will require a kinetic treatment of the edge, which can be addressed theoretically, and with experiments in LTX-β. Additional smaller-scale preparatory R&D facilities will be required to reduce the risk of premature technical/engineering failure of liquid metal systems implemented in NSTX-U. The NSTX-U/LMCE facility aligns very well with recommendations in the FESAC Long-Range Plan and NASEM Pilot Plant reports and the Bold Decadal Vision, will be unique in the world program throughout the next decade, and is garnering private company interest in utilizing NSTX-U/LMCE for development of LM PFCs.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Robust impurity detection and tracking for tokamaks

A robust impurity detection and tracking code, able to generate large sets of dust tracks from tokamak camera footage, is presented. This machine learning–based code is tested with cameras from the Joint European Torus, Doublet-III-D, and Magnum-PSI and is able to generate dust tracks with a 65 – 100 % classification accuracy. Moreover, the number dust particles detected from a single camera shot can be up to the order of 1000. Several areas of improvement for the code are highlighted, such as generating more significant training data sets and accounting for selection biases. Finally, although the code is tested with dust in single two-dimensional camera views, it could easily be applied to multiple-camera stereoscopic reconstruction or nondust impurities.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS2014

Milagro Observations of Potential TeV Emitters

This paper reports the results from three targeted searches of Milagro TeV sky maps: two extragalactic point source lists and one pulsar source list. The first extragalactic candidate list consists of 709 candidates selected from the Fermi-LAT 2FGL catalog. The second extragalactic candidate list contains 31 candidates selected from the TeVCat source catalog that have been detected by imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs). In both extragalactic candidate lists Mkn 421 was the only source detected by Milagro. This paper presents the Milagro TeV flux for Mkn 421 and flux limits for the brighter Fermi- LAT extragalactic sources and for all TeVCat candidates. The pulsar list extends a previously published Milagro targeted search for Galactic sources. With the 32 new gamma-ray pulsars identified in 2FGL, the number of pulsars that are studied by both Fermi-LAT and Milagro is increased to 52. In this sample, we find that the probability of Milagro detecting a TeV emission coincident with a pulsar increases with the GeV flux observed by the Fermi-LAT in the energy range from 0.1 GeV to 100 GeV.

Pulsars↗
NASA NTRS2012

Spectrum and Morphology of the Two Brightest Milagro Sources in the Cygnus Region: MGRO J2019+37 and MGRO J2031+41

The Cygnus region is a very bright and complex portion of the TeV sky, host to unidentified sources and a diffuse excess with respect to conventional cosmic-ray propagation models. Two of the brightest TeV sources, MGRO J2019+37 and MGRO J2031+41, are analyzed using Milagro data with a new technique, and their emission is tested under two different spectral assumptions: a power law and a power law with an exponential cutoff. The new analysis technique is based on an energy estimator that uses the fraction of photomultiplier tubes in the observatory that detect the extensive air shower. The photon spectrum is measured in the range 1-100 TeV using the last three years of Milagro data (2005-2008), with the detector in its final configuration. An F-test indicates that MGRO J2019+37 is better fit by a power law with an exponential cutoff than by a simple power law. The best-fitting parameters for the power law with exponential cutoff model are a normalization at 10 TeV of 7(sup +5 sub −2) × 10(exp −10)/ s /sq m/ TeV, a spectral index of 2.0(sup +0.5 sub -10), and a cutoff energy of 29(sup +50 sub −16) TeV. MGRO J2031+41 shows no evidence of a cutoff. The best-fitting parameters for a power law are a normalization of 2.1(sup +0.6 sub −0.6) × 10(exp −10)/ s/sq m/ TeV and a spectral index of 3.22(sup +0.23 sub −0.18. The overall flux is subject to a approx.. 30% systematic uncertainty. The systematic uncertainty on the power-law indices is approx. 0.1. Both uncertainties have been verified with cosmic-ray data. A comparison with previous results from TeV J2032+4130, MGRO J2031+41, and MGRO J2019+37 is also presented.

BRIGHTEST↗
NASA NTRS2011

Observation and Spectral Measurements of the Crab Nebula with Milagro

The Crab Nebula was detected with the Milagro experiment at a statistical significance of 17 standard deviations over the lifetime of the experiment. The experiment was sensitive to approximately 100 GeV - 100 TeV gamma ray air showers by observing the particle footprint reaching the ground. The fraction of detectors recording signals from photons at the ground is a suitable proxy for the energy of the primary particle and has been used to measure the photon energy spectrum of the Crab Nebula between ~1 and ~100 TeV. The TeV emission is believed to be caused by inverse-Compton up-scattering scattering of ambient photons by an energetic electron population. The location of a Te V steepening or cutoff in the energy spectrum reveals important details about the underlying electron population. We describe the experiment and the technique for distinguishing gamma-ray events from the much more-abundant hadronic events. We describe the calculation of the significance of the excess from the Crab and how the energy spectrum is fit.

Abdo, A. A.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Astrometric and Photometric Follow-up of Faint Near Earth Objects

During the period April 2003 - April 2005, roughly 150 different faint NEO's were observed using the 1.2-m telescope at Mt. Hopkins. Among these were a couple of spacecraft/radar targets, including support observations in support of the Deep Impact mission. While not strictly an NEO target, comet P/Tempel 1 was nonetheless observed as an object of very high importance. During this time and independent contractor, Kyle Smalley, was trained in the use of the telescope and provided some basic software support for the project.

Morgan, T.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Software Assists in Responding to Anomalous Conditions

Fault Induced Document Retrieval Officer (FIDO) is a computer program that reduces the need for a large and costly team of engineers and/or technicians to monitor the state of a spacecraft and associated ground systems and respond to anomalies. FIDO includes artificial-intelligence components that imitate the reasoning of human experts with reference to a knowledge base of rules that represent failure modes and to a database of engineering documentation. These components act together to give an unskilled operator instantaneous expert assistance and access to information that can enable resolution of most anomalies, without the need for highly paid experts. FIDO provides a system state summary (a configurable engineering summary) and documentation for diagnosis of a potentially failing component that might have caused a given error message or anomaly. FIDO also enables high-level browsing of documentation by use of an interface indexed to the particular error message. The collection of available documents includes information on operations and associated procedures, engineering problem reports, documentation of components, and engineering drawings. FIDO also affords a capability for combining information on the state of ground systems with detailed, hierarchically-organized, hypertext- enabled documentation.

James, Mark↗
NASA NTRS2004

Astrometric Follow-Up of Faint Near Earth Objects

The observing program at Mt. Hopkins using the 48" reflector and funded by the Near- Earth Object Observation Program continues to excel. As in the past, all requested observing time was granted. Minor improvements continue to be made. For example, the telescope is set up to track and non-sidereal rates. This allows the user to track on the target object, rather than relying exclusively on the shift- and-stack technique. Other improvements made by the staff include automatic focus routines, automatic seeing-measurement routines, and improvement in dome seeing and mirror stabilization. The net result is better focus, better seeing, and the ability to expose longer in order to acquire the faintest and most important objects. During the proposal period, this program ranked again very high worldwide in terms of faint Near Earth Objects observed. During this latest proposal cycle, fewer objects were observed than previous cycles, but this was due to the strict targeting of only the faintest observable objects. The follow-up programs of observatory codes 926 (led by P. Holvorcem) and 291 (led by Dr. B. McMillan) have greatly increased their capacity, and as a result less bright objects are in urgent need of follow-up than in years past. Even with this new object selection and additional competition, code 696 still ranked second to code 291 in terms of objects observed fainter than V = 20. Minimal scripting is now in place to allow the telescope to run autonomously for 30-45 minutes at a time.

Morgan, T.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Lessons learned from the introduction of autonomous monitoring to the EUVE science operations center

The University of California at Berkeley's (UCB) Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics (CEA), in conjunction with NASA's Ames Research Center (ARC), has implemented an autonomous monitoring system in the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) science operations center (ESOC). The implementation was driven by a need to reduce operations costs and has allowed the ESOC to move from continuous, three-shift, human-tended monitoring of the science payload to a one-shift operation in which the off shifts are monitored by an autonomous anomaly detection system. This system includes Eworks, an artificial intelligence (AI) payload telemetry monitoring package based on RTworks, and Epage, an automatic paging system to notify ESOC personnel of detected anomalies. In this age of shrinking NASA budgets, the lessons learned on the EUVE project are useful to other NASA missions looking for ways to reduce their operations budgets. The process of knowledge capture, from the payload controllers for implementation in an expert system, is directly applicable to any mission considering a transition to autonomous monitoring in their control center. The collaboration with ARC demonstrates how a project with limited programming resources can expand the breadth of its goals without incurring the high cost of hiring additional, dedicated programmers. This dispersal of expertise across NASA centers allows future missions to easily access experts for collaborative efforts of their own. Even the criterion used to choose an expert system has widespread impacts on the implementation, including the completion time and the final cost. In this paper we discuss, from inception to completion, the areas where our experiences in moving from three shifts to one shift may offer insights for other NASA missions.

Lewis, M.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Discovery of sodium in the atmosphere of Mercury

The spectrum of Mercury at the Fraunhofer sodium D lines shows strong emission features that are attributed to resonant scattering of sunlight from sodium vapor in the atmosphere of the planet. The total column abundance of sodium was estimated to be 8.1 x 10 to the 11th atoms per square centimeter which corresponds to a surface density at the subsolar point of about 150,000 atoms per cubic centimeter. The most abundant atmospheric species found by the Mariner 10 mission to Mercury was helium, with a surface density of 4500 atoms per cubic centimeter. It now appears that sodium vapor is a major constituent of Mercury's atmosphere.

Potter, A.↗
NASA NTRS1984

Lunar luminescence and the filling-in of Fraunhofer lines in moonlight

The filling-in of Fraunhofer lines in moonlight has been attributed to lunar luminescence. In order to test mechanisms proposed for this effect, measurements were made of the filling-in of the H-alpha line, the Na D doublet, and a number of lines near the doublet. The degree of filling-in was not correlated with wavelength in a way expected from a broadband luminescence, such as thermoluminescence. However, it was correlated with equivalent width of the Fraunhofer line, such that it increased as equivalent width decreased. This suggests that the Fraunhofer line filling at the moon's surface is caused by inelastic scattering of sunlight with a small wavelength shift, as for example, photon-phonon scattering.

Potter, A. E.↗
NASA NTRS1977

Inversion climatology at San Jose, California

Month-to-month variations in the early morning surface-based and near-noon elevated inversions at San Jose, Calif., were determined from slow rise radiosondes launched during a four-year period. A high frequency of shallow, radiative, surface-based inversions were found in winter during the early morning hours, while during the same period in summer, a low frequency of deeper based inversions arose from a combination of radiative and subsidence processes. The frequency of elevated inversions in the hours near noon was lowest during fall and spring, while inversion bases were highest and thicknesses least during these periods.

Morgan, T.↗