Identification of [Fe III] in the solar ultraviolet spectrum
Solar ultraviolet spectra have been obtained with high spectral and spatial resolution using the Naval Research Laboratory's high-resolution telescope and spectrograph1 (HRTS) flown on rockets since 1975 and most recently on the Spacelab 2 Shuttle flight. Because the solar spectrum between ∼1,170 and 1,719 Å has been well observed for some years, few lines of substantial intensity remain unidentified. (See for example the recent compilation by Sandlin et al.2). The longest exposures during the first rocket flight of the HRTS, which obtained spectra with a spatial resolution of ∼ 1 arc s along the slit, of length ∼ 1 solar radius, and a spectral resolution of ∼0.05 Å, showed a number of weak emission lines at the solar limb, in particular between 1,570 and 1,600 Å (see Plates 16 and 17 in ref. 3), that could not readily be identified. Improved observations of these lines were obtained during the flight of HRTS on the Spacelab 2 Shuttle flight in July–August 1985, by making longer exposures (60,100 and 250 s). The scope of the data obtained has been described4. We have now identified the emission lines concerned as forbidden (electric quadrupole and magnetic dipole) transitions in Fe III, the first detection of these particular transitions in any source. They must now be considered potential candidates for previously unidentified lines in other low-density (Ne ≲ 1010 cm−3) astrophysical sources.
New mounting for X-ray and extreme ultraviolet concave holographic grating
An entirely new mounting for concave holographic gratings for X-ray and the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) has been proposed and its properties have been investigated theoretically. Design parameters for recording a holographic concave grating for minimum spectral image aberrations have been calculated. It is found that this mounting is very suitable.
Normed units in abelian group rings
We compute explicitly the isomorphic structure of the normalized unit group of an abelian group ring under some minimal natural restrictions on the group basis and the coefficient ring. This enlarges affirmations due to Chatzidakis-Pappas (J. London Math. Soc., 1991) and Mollov (Publ. Math. Debrecen, 1971).