Nº 6 (2021)

История Астрономического совета Академии наук СССР (Астросовета) – Института астрономии Российской академии наук – разделяется на две эпохи: 1936–1990 гг., когда его главной функцией была координация работы астрономических учреждений страны, и период с 1990 г. по настоящее время, когда бывший Астросовет стал многопрофильным научно-исследовательским учреждением (ЗиВ, 2006, № 5; 2016, № 6). У каждой из этих эпох были свои особенности и знаковые моменты. Эта статья посвящена, в основном, первому периоду. О втором периоде – исследованиях, которые проводятся в ИНАСАН в последние годы, – расскажут другие статьи этого номера журнала.

Институт астрономии Российской академии наук (ИНАСАН) является одним из ведущих научных институтов России. Важным направлением исследований ИНАСАН, его «визитной карточкой» являются фундаментальные космические исследования. Институт занимается разработкой средств космического базирования для наблюдений астрономических объектов. В статье кратко рассказывается об этих проектах: крупной многоцелевой космической обсерватории «Спектр-УФ» для наблюдений в ультрафиолетовом диапазоне, а также поисковых космических средствах наблюдения астрономических объектов как в дальнем, так и в ближнем космосе.

The idea of distant stars possessing planets dates back to the epoch of Giordano Bruno, but we managed to prove it only recently. Prior to the discovery of first extrasolar planets we believed that other planetary systems should be similar to our own Solar System with several gas giant planets in outer orbits and a number of smaller rocky planets rotating close to the host star. However, one of first discovered planets unexpectedly appeared to be half the mass of Jupiter and orbiting its host star at a distance of about one seventh of the distance between Mercury and the Sun. By now there have been a large number of such planets discovered, all of them are now known as “hot Jupiters”.

Space dust is an integral element of interstellar medium, along with interstellar duct and various fields. To understand the space phenomena, the astronomers need to know the properties of dust particles, since we observe any object in the Universe through this dusty curtain. The nuclei of dust particles, consisting of carbon and silicon compounds, are covered with icy mantles made of frozen water and other molecules. One can determine the composition of the mantles and high-melting silicon nuclei using observational methods of Earth-bound astronomy. But it is much harder to study the composition of carbon nuclei, since one can observe their emissions only for a limited class of objects. These can be observed in photodissociation regions in midand far-IR range, which is mostly inaccessible from the Earth. The photodissociation regions (PDRs) are regions in space, transitional between ionized hydrogen and molecular gas. Planning of every extraterrestrial infrared observatory goes along with intense theoretical studies of carbon space dust. The modeling of PDRs, studies of microphysics in the dust evolution in PDRs, observations of PDRs with Russian and foreign telescopes are run in the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

For last twenty years our group has been modelling the processes of solar wind plasma penetrating the outer layers of planetary atmospheres in the Solar system. The models of electron and proton auroras were used to study the northern lights and explanation of observations in the upper layers of the Earth’s (NASA’s IMAGE project), Venusian (ESA’s Venus Express mission) and Martian (ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s MAVEN missions) atmospheres. The same models were implemented to interpret the observations of auroras at giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, made by Hubble space telescope. Now, our mathematical models of plasma particles precipitation are used to study various types of newly discovered auroras on Mars – discrete, diffuse, and proton, using available data of Mars Express and MAVEN spacecraft. We also study the effect of particle precipitation on the upper and middle layers of Martian atmosphere in ExoMars space project (ESA/Roscosmos).