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- Wayne Fullerton (UF) "Autonomous Capture of a Tumbling
Spacecraft"
- Karl Haisch, Jr. (UF) "A survey of Neutral Hydrogen
in Shell Elliptical Galaxies"
- Richard Hull (UCF) "Robust Nonlinear Control Design
Systems"
- Barbara Jenkins (UF) "Time Series Analysis and
Interpretation of Chaotic Orbital Data"
- Timothy Spahr (UF) "High Ecliptic Latitude Study
of Near Earth Asteroids and Comets"
Barbara
Jenkins (1995 Fellow)
Over the past several decades astronomers
have become aware of the growing role of chaos in galactic
and solar system dynamics. At the same time mathematicians
working in nonlinear dynamics have developed a number of powerful
tools to use in the analysis of dynamical systems. Unfortunately
not all of these tools are directly applicable to astronomical
systems. The fellow proposes to develop and apply spectral
techniques to the analysis of time series data of chaotic
orbits in galactic potentials on short, astronomically realistic,
timescales. This will be done by exploiting the fact that,
in a well defined sense, a chaotic orbit is constructed as
a superposition of pieces of several different regular orbits.
The astronomical motivation is to use spectral techniques
as a tool to investigate the structural stability of conventional
galactic modeling towards various sorts of low amplitude irregularities
( graininess, weak dissipation, spatial symmetry breaking,
presence of a supermassive black hole, and gravitational interactions
with galaxies and other extragalactic objects) which are typically
ignored.
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