In 1993, CASCA initiated a program of support for astronomy in the former Soviet Union through an appeal for donations (Cassiopeia, No. 80, 7, 1993) to a fund from which small travel grants to deserving young astronomers would be made. This program was made possible through an agreement with the Euro-Asian Astronomical Society, who established a committee to supervise the awarding of the grants in the former Soviet Union (Cassiopeia, No. 82, 5, 1994). By 1994, this program had become part of Cascatrust's charitable activities (Cassiopeia, No. 83, 10, 1994).
To date, in two fund-raising campaigns, CASCA members have donated $2400 (US) to the program, and already some twenty young astronomers have benefitted from it. The extraordinary success of the program prompted the CASCA membership present at the 1995 Annual Meeting in Penticton to vote overwhelmingly in favour of extending the program for one more year.
In the following, I will present a summary of the grants that have already been made, and a few more detailed reports submitted by individual recipients to Cascatrust, in order to demonstrate how effective this program has become in providing researchers with travel assistance. It is remarkable how much research travel can be done for so little money, and hence how important our contributions are.
In the first round of disbursement of CASCA funds ($1325 US donated in 1993/94) in early 1995, the following travel was facilitated:
1) A grant of $170 allowed Lydia Makarova, an astronomer from the Special Astrophysical Observatory, to visit Potsdam, Germany, to do photometry of M82 group galaxies.
2) A fourth-year student from the Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Yuri Kovalev, used $200 to make several trips to the RATAN-600 radio telescope at the Special Astrophysical Observatory to make observations of a complete sample of extragalactic radio sources.
3) A $200 grant enabled Lidia Chinarova, an astronomer from the Odessa Observatory, to travel to the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in order to carry out numerical analysis of observational data using large computers which are lacking in Odessa.
4) Natalia Bondar, of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, used a grant of $150 to travel to the Sternberg Astronomical Institute in order to study solar-like phenomena in UV Ceti stars.
5) An undergraduate student at the St. Petersburg Technical University - Ioffe Physical Technical Institute, Alexander Ivanchik, was able to visit the Special Astrophysical Observatory to study absorption lines in the spectra of QSO's with large red shift because of a grant of $120.
6) A grant of $200 allowed Michail Demidov of the Siberian Institute for Solar and Terrestrial Physics to visit the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in order to make observations of the time variations of the solar magnetic field.
7) A $100 grant facilitated a trip to the Institute of Space Research in Moscow by Bogdan Novosyadly of the Lvov State University Astronomical Observatory, for collaborative work on models of mixed hidden mass in the Universe.
8) Edik Djaniashvily of the Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory used a grant of $200 to travel to the Sternberg Astronomical Institute for a program of analysis of broad-band photoelectric observations of eclipsing binary systems of the WR type.
A second round of disbursement this year, using $920 of the $1075 US contributed to Cascatrust in 1994/5, has been approved for the following recipents:
1) Vitaly Gutorov and Sergei Fomin, two students at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute have been granted $120 for a series of visits to the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory to make Fabry-Perot observations of gaseous nebulae.
2) Victor Shcherbakov, a postgraduate student at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, has been awarded $100 for two, two-week visits to the Space Research Institute in order to pursue new investigations of the eclipsing binary BM Ori.
3) Sergei Andreevski and Valeri Kovtyukh of the Astronomical Observatory of the Odessa State University have received a grant of $150 to visit the Special Astrophysical Observatory and make new observations with the 6-m telescope.
4) An award of $220 has been made to Tina Kakhniashvili of the Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory to facilitate a visit to the Space Research Institute for collaborative theoretical work on models of mixed hidden mass in the Universe.
5) Andrei Tatarnikov, of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute, has been granted $60 to visit the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory to continue the program of photometric monitoring of variable stars of various types.
6) Sergei Udovichenko of the Odessa State University has received a grant of $75 to assist with a visit to the Special Astrophysical Observatory in order to make a series of observations with the 6-m telescope.
7) Three people from the Astronomical Observatory of the Nikolaev Pedagogical Institute, Sergei Guzij, Aleksei Shliapnikov and Elena Panko, have been awarded $180 to make a series of visits to the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in order to carry out observations and complete their theses.
Recipients of CASCA Travel Grants are requested to provide Cascatrust with short accounts of their research travel that has been facilitated by a CASCA grant. Several of these (somewhat edited) are appended to this article, and I hope that they will illustrate how valuable a program this is. I urge every CASCA member to contribute something, even if only a few dollars, to this year's fund. It would be gratifying indeed if we could bring our total contribution to this program close to our original goal of $5000 Cdn or more. Clearly economic conditions in the former Soviet Union are improving, but the situation is still very precarious. Our contributions, although small compared with other efforts, are playing an important role in maintaining the vitality of our science in countries in considerable turmoil.
Natalia Bondar (Crimean Astrophysical Observatory) writes:
My work has been supported by a CASCA grant and this grant has been used for travel and my stay in Moscow at the Sternberg State Astronomical Institut (SAI), Department of Variable Stars, for a rather long time - about three months. I was in Moscow in April - May, 1995, and then I am going to continue my work in August - October. During this time, I will be collecting all the information about the common parameters and photometric data for red dwarfs in the list below, using the catalogues of the SAI; choosing standard fields and measuring comparison stars with an iris photometer; measuring the brightness of programme stars and checking stars on all photographic plates including them to detect any long-term variation in their mean light curves; and checking the measurements after preliminary calculations in order to repeat them if needed. In short, the grant supports my travel and stay at SAI for three months while studying the brightness behaviour of some active red dwarfs on a time scale of several tenths of years, using the plate collection of SAI. These investigations are needed to search for cyclical changes in the mean light connected with activity of red dwarfs. In April - May the measurements were started for stars marked by asterisks.
List of programme stars:
1E 0419.2+19, *V808 Tau, *V910 Ori, *V1003 Ori, *AA Cnc, EI Cnc, WX UMa, Gl 699, V2354 Sgr, V1348 Aql, V1335 Aql, *V1816 Cyg, FG Aqr.
---------------------
Lydia Makarova (Special Astrophysical Observatory, Russian Academy of Sciences) writes:
A program on the distance estimation of nearby galaxies by stellar photometry of the brightest stars in the galaxies is in progress at the 6-m telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory, Russian Academy of Sciences. Taking part in this program, I have visited the Astrophysical Institute, Potsdam, Germany from 20 March, 1955, to 20 May, 1955, collaborating with Dr. P. Notni on this project. This travel was supported by a CASCA Small Travel Grant, covering my expenses in purchasing tickets.
The M 81 group of galaxies was the focus of our special attention. In fact, images of the outermost north- eastern part of the M 82 galaxy had been obtained at the 6-m telescope in Johnson V and Cousins I filters, resolving this galaxy into single stars. The reduction of these images was carried out at the Astrophysical Institute, Potsdam, using the MIDAS reduction system. Stellar photometry in our frames was made using the background-interpolating photometry procedure, which is the private software of P. Notni. To cope also with the cases of close double or multiple objects, we used the DAOPHOT II package of P. Stetson. The DAOPHOT program was severely limited by the very irregular background in our field, so, we used the DAOPHOT reduction results only for the estimation of photometric accuracy.
Most of the measured stars in our field are probably members of M 82 itself, with the luminosities between -8 and -6 mag. Thus they are comparatively young stars with masses between 10 and 20 solar masses. We estimate their age to be about 10 million years.
We also have plans to investigate other M 81 group galaxies. The images of the galaxies have been obtained at the 6-m telescope as well as at the telescopes of our German colleagues in Spain.
The results of our investigation of M 82 are now in preparation for the press.
--------
Dr. Bogdan Novosyadlyj (senior research worker, Astronomical Observatoru of L'viv State University, Ukraine) writes:
The goal of my travel, supported by a small CASCA travel grant, to the Astro-Space Center (Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Science, Moscow) was to continue the international co-operation on the problem of the formation of the large scale structure of the Universe and determination of the initial power spectrum. We have calculated transfer functions for adiabatic scalar fluctuations in the flat Friedmann Universe dominated by cold and hot dark matter with different contents (hybrid models). We have normalized spectra of these models by COBE 10 degree dT/T and compared predictions of these models with observational data on cosmic background anisotropy at different angular scales, bulk motions, correlation functions of galaxies and rich clusters of galaxies and the redshift distribution of quasars. It has been shown that the most promising model (with 85% CDM and 15% HDM) does not explain the peculiar velocity of galaxies in the top-hat sphere with radius of 50-100 Mpc/h, as well as the cluster-cluster correlation function. Moreover, the existence of the large-scale structures such as the Great Attractor, Shapley Concentration, Great Void, Great Wall, etc. in the framework of this model is also improbable. The viability of hybrid models may be provided by the rejection of the hypothesis about the all scale invariance of the primordial (post-inflation) spectrum. A paper in collaboration with Dr. V.N. Lukash (ASC, Moscow) and Dr. T.A. Kachniashvili (Georgia) is in process.
--------
Alexander Ivanchik (St. Petersburg Technical University and Ioffe Physical Technical Institute) writes:
My CASCA small travel grant was used for a trip to the 6-m Telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory to conduct observations. These were part of the program "Spectroscopy of Quasars and Cosmology" with Prof. D.A. Varshalovich as principal investigator.
The observations of quasar spectra at high redshifts were made by myself and V.E. Panchuk, using the 6-m Telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory, Russia. High-resolution spectra (FWHM of about 0.3-0.4 A, and S/N ratio of about 7 - 15) were obtained for the quasars HS 1946+76, S5 0014+81, and S4 0636+64. Data reduction was carried out with the software program "DECH" for the processing of CCD-images of echelle spectra (G.A. Galazutdinov). Our main goal in studying the absorption spectra of quasars was to determine the parameters of the heavy element absorption systems in order to estimate possible time variation of the fine-structure constant (alpha = e2 / hc) over cosmological time scales (about 1010 yr).
As a result of the data reduction, four absorption systems of Si IV were reliably identified. One of the four systems consists of three components. In our final analysis we have obtained six of the strongest individual estimates of (delta alpha) / alpha. Six other doublets of Si IV have been analysed earlier by P. Petitjean, M. Rauch and R.F. Carswell (ESO preprint, 1994, No. 994) with about the same precision in (delta alpha) / alpha. As a result of the next series of observations we expect to obtain the strongest limitation on the possible time variation of alpha for the epoch 2 < z < 4. Such a limitation will enable to us to select amongst theoretical models which predict differing variability of the fine-structure constant.
I am extremely thankful to CASCA and EAAS for the travel grant.
--------------
Dr. Tina Kahniashvili (Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory) writes:
During my visit to the Astro-Space Center (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), supported by a CASCA travel grant, I have investigated some problems of large-scale structure formation in hybrid dark matter models of the Universe (in collaboration with Prof. V. Lukash).
In particular, we are interested in the primordial spectrum of perturbations in hybrid DMM. In the framework of the linear theory of perturbations, we have derived the system of equations describing the gravitational instability in a multi-component Universe (taking into account the role of massless collisionless particles). We assumed that the dark matter in the Universe is represented by cold particles (like axions) and hot particles (like massive neutrinos), and we assumed that the total energy density is equal to the critical density. In our approximation the role of baryons is neglected. Our description has the following free parameters:
1. The number of kinds of massless weakly interacting particles, which is connected with their total energy at the relativistic stage in comparison with the photon energy density.
2. The fraction of hot particles in the total energy density today.
3. The ratio of energy density of hot particles at the relativistic stage to the total energy of the relativistic component.
The derived system of equations is integro- differential and its solution requires numerical simulation.
The aim of our work is to derive the transfer function (we assume that the post-inflationary spectrum is the standard spectrum of Harrison-Zeldovich). This function would give us the capability to describe completely the pregalactic perturbation spectrum in a multi-component Universe.
During my visit we have obtained the numerical solutions and we have derived the transfer function for various values of the parameters. We have also normalized the derived spectra, using COBE, by the mass r.m.s. perturbation at 8/h Mpc.
We plan in future to continue the investigation of the perturbation spectra in the hybrid DMM in a Universe with non-zero cosmological constant.
Lloyd Higgs
Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO),
Box 248, Penticton, B.C., Canada V2A 6K3
Telephone: (604) 490-4325
FAX: (604) 493-7767 or: (604) 493-2277
lah@drao.nrc.ca
Canadian Astronomy Publications
Up to Cassiopeia index.
Up to CASCA Home Page
Please e-mail any suggestions/comments to Jack Penfold (jpenfold@mtroyal.ab.ca)