Castalia

Castalia (/kəˈsteɪliə/; Greek: Κασταλία), in Greek mythology, was a nymph whom Apollo transformed into a fountain at Delphi, at the base of Mount Parnassos, or at Mount Helicon. Castalia could inspire the genius of poetry to those who drank her waters or listened to their quiet sound; the sacred water was also used to clean the Delphian temples. Apollo consecrated Castalia to the Muses (Castaliae Musae).

The 20th century German writer Hermann Hesse used Castalia as inspiration for the name of the futuristic fictional utopia in his 1943 magnum opus, The Glass Bead Game. Castalia is home to an austere order of intellectuals with a twofold mission: to run boarding schools for boys, and to nurture and play the Glass Bead Game.

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4769 Castalia

The asteroid 4769 Castalia (/kᵻˈsteɪliə/ kə-STAY-lee-ə; previously known by the provisional designation 1989 PB) was the first asteroid to be modeled by radar imaging. It is an Apollo, Mars- and Venus-crosser asteroid. It was discovered on August 9, 1989, by Eleanor F. Helin (Caltech) on photographic plates taken at Palomar Observatory. It is named after Castalia, a nymph in Greek mythology.

General information

On 25 August 1989 Castalia passed 0.0269378 AU (4,029,840 km; 2,504,020 mi) (within eleven lunar distances) of Earth, allowing it to be observed with radar from the Arecibo Observatory by Scott Hudson (Washington State University) and Steven J. Ostro (JPL). The data allowed Hudson et al. to produce a three-dimensional model of the object. During the 1989 passage Castalia peaked at an apparent magnitude of 12.

Castalia has a peanut shape, suggesting two approximately 800-meter-diameter pieces held together by their weak mutual gravity. Since then radar observations of other asteroids have found other contact binaries.

Castalia (simulator)

Castalia is a simulator for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Body Area Networks and generally networks of low-power embedded devices. It is based on the OMNeT++ platform and used by researchers and developers to test their distributed algorithms and/or protocols in a realistic wireless channel and radio model, with a realistic node behaviour especially relating to access of the radio. Castalia uses the lognormal shadowing model as one of the ways to model average path loss, which has been shown to explain empirical data in WSN. It also models temporal variation of path loss in an effort to capture fading phenomena in changing environments (i.e., the nodes or parts of the environment are moving). Castalia's temporal variation modeling is designed to be fitted to measured data instead of making specific assumptions on the creation of fast fading. Other features of Castalia include: physical process modeling, sensing device bias and noise, node clock drift, and several MAC and routing protocols implemented.