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News Archive 2011

Division 7

In early October, the European Space Agency ESA decided – within the scope of its Cosmic-Vision plan – to launch the Solar Orbiter mission into space in 2017. PTB will contribute to the characterisation of two instruments this spacecraft has on board – the spectrograph SPICE (Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment) for wavelengths between 48 nm and 105 nm, and the EUI (Extreme Ultraviolet...

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In view of the redefinition of the base units of the International System of Units (SI) via fundamental constants, research groups from all over the world have been dealing with determining also the value of the Boltzmann constant with uncertainties of a few ppm. If they are successful, the unit "kelvin" could be redefined. Many groups apply the so-called acoustic gas thermometry, a method which...

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The new EUV beamline at the electron storage ring Metrology Light Source was commissioned this summer. Given this important event, Working Group "EUV Radiometry" is organising a PTB-Seminar on EUV Metrology. This seminar aims to present the measurement capabilities provided by the new beamline in the EUV range to PTB's numerous partners from fundamental research and ...

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In practical applications, the operating conditions for heat meters in large facilities or networks often deviate from the idealized calibration conditions which are prevailing at PTB's test facility. This leads to - partly considerable - measurement deviations. A newly developed procedure now allows heat meters to be investigated under installation conditions and without service ...

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The solar spectrometer SolACES (Solar Auto-Calibrating EUV/UV Spectrophotometers), developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques (IPM) in Freiburg (Germany), has been measuring the solar spectrum in the wavelength interval between 17 nm and 220 nm since 2008. Originally planned for an 18 month operation period only, the European Space Agency (ESA) has now decided after...

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