At the beginning of the 20th century, Kristian Birkeland (1867-1917), a Norwegian scientist of insatiable curiosity, addressed questions that had vexed European scientists for centuries. Why do the northern lights appear overhead when the earth's magnetic field is disturbed? How are magnetic storms connected to disturbances on the sun? To answer these questions Birkeland interpreted his advance laboratory simulations and daring campaigns in the Arctic wilderness in the light of Maxwell's newly discovered laws of electricity and magnetism. Birkeland's ideas were dismissed for decades, only to be vindicated when satellites could fly above the earth's atmosphere.

This volume offers a comprehensive and integrated overview of our present knowledge and understanding of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and their descendants, Interplanetary CMEs (ICMEs). It results from a series of workshops held between 2000 and 2004. An international team of about sixty experimenters involved e.g. in the SOHO, ULYSSES, VOYAGER, PIONEER, HELIOS, WIND, IMP, and ACE missions, ground observers, and theoreticians worked jointly on interpreting the observations and developing new models for CME initiations, development, and interplanetary propagation. with an up-to-date status of the current understanding of CMEs and ICMEs and their effects in the heliosphere, and also to serve the advanced graduate student with introductory material on this active field of research.

ESA's Venus Express Mission has monitored Venus since April 2006, and scientists worldwide have used mathematical models to investigate its atmosphere and model its circulation. This book summarizes recent work to explore and understand the climate of the planet through a research program under the auspices of the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland. Some of the unique elements that are discussed are the anomalies with Venus' surface temperature (the huge greenhouse effect causes the surface to rise to 460 DegreesC, without which would plummet as low as -40 DegreesC), its unusual lack of solar radiation (despite being closer to the Sun, Venus receives less solar radiation than Earth due to its dense cloud cover reflecting 76% back) and the juxtaposition of its atmosphere and planetary rotation (wind speeds can climb up to 200 m/s, much faster than Venus' sidereal day of 243 Earth-days).

Can we detect the moons of extrasolar planets? For two decades, astronomers have made enormous progress in the detection and characterisation of exoplanetary systems but the identification of an "exomoon" is notably absent. In this thesis, David Kipping shows how transiting planets may be used to infer the presence of exomoons through deviations in the time and duration of the planetary eclipses. A detailed account of the transit model, potential distortions, and timing techniques is covered before the analytic forms for the timing variations are derived. It is shown that habitable-zone exomoons above 0.2 Earth-masses are detectable with the Kepler space telescope using these new timing techniques.

This volume documents recent developments that have advanced our understanding of the heating and cooling mechanisms in galaxies and galaxy clusters. Chapters detail results from multi-wavelength observations and advances in numerical hydrodynamical simulations. An additional section covers new research findings on feedback and self-regulatory mechanisms during cosmic structure formation in general and in galaxy formation in particular.

The present volume gathers together the talks presented at the second colloquim on the Future Professional Communication in Astronomy (FPCA II), held at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) on 13-14 April 2010. This meeting provided a forum for editors, publishers, scientists, librarians and officers of learned societies to discuss the future of the field. The program included talks from leading researchers and practitioners and drew a crowd of approximately 50 attendees from 10 countries. These proceedings contain contributions from invited and contributed talks from leaders in the field, touching on a number of topics. Among them: - The role of disciplinary repositories such as ADS and arXiv in astronomy and the physical sciences; - Current status and future of Open Access Publishing models and their impact on astronomy and astrophysics publishing; - Emerging trends in scientific article publishing: semantic annotations, multimedia content, links to data products hosted by astrophysics archives; - Novel approaches to the evaluation of facilities and projects based on bibliometric indicators; - Impact of Government mandates, Privacy laws, and Intellectual Property Rights on the evolving digital publishing environment in astronomy; - Communicating astronomy to the public: the experience of the International Year of Astronomy 2009.

The joint NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn is the most ambitious planetary mission since the VEGA mission to Venus and Halley in 1985/86 and the Viking arbiters and landers to Mars in 1976.

This volume describes the mission, the orbiter spacecraft, the Titan atmospheric probe and the mission design in articles written by its project scientists and engineering team. These are followed by five articles from each of the discipline working groups discussing the existing knowledge of the Saturnian system and their goals for the mission.

Finally, each of the Huygens entry probe instrument teams describes their instruments and measurement objectives. These instruments include an atmospheric structure instrument, an aerosol pyrolyser, an imager/radiometer, a gas chromatograph, a surface science package and a radio science investigation. This book is of interest to all potential users of the Cassini-Huygens data, to those who wish to learn about the planned scientific return from the Cassini-Huygens mission and those curious about the processes occurring on this most fascinating planet.

The 50th anniversary of the discovery of quasars in 1963 presents an interesting opportunity to ask questions about the current state of quasar research. Formatted as a series of interviews with noted researchers in the field, each of them asked to address a specific set of questions covering topics selected by the editors, this book deals with the historical development of quasar research and discusses how advances in instrumentation and computational capabilities have benefitted quasar astronomy and have changed our basic understanding of quasars. In the last part of the book the interviews address the current topic of the role of quasars in galaxy evolution. They summarise open issues in understanding active galactic nuclei and quasars and present an outlook regarding what future observational facilities both on the ground and in space might reveal.

Its interview format, the fascinating topic of quasars and black holes, and the lively recollections and at times controversial views of the contributors make this book both rewarding and a pleasure to read

This volume presents an analysis of the historical background, current status, and future development of space law by noted legal scholars. It focuses on a distinct and growing field of international law that incorporates both public and private law. Specific areas covered are scientific and technical aspects of space and space law; the United Nations and other institutional arrangements; national regulatory aspects; satellite applications; commercialization; dispute settlement; and case law.

Since the establishment of a special law-making body at the United Nations in 1958, there has been a steady expansion of laws and regulations pertaining to space activities. The result has been the development of a distinct and mature discipline of international law. This analysis of space law by recognized experts in the field will interest scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers involved in the regulation of space use and exploration.

The topics covered in this book include: Theory of Scattering and Scintillation, Distribution of Scattering Material, Intra-day Variability, Pulsars and their Magnetospheric Structure, Polarization of AGN, Interplanetary Scintillation, and Future Highly-Sensitive Radio Telescopes. The introductory papers emphasize the essential properties of diffractive and refractive scattering, how they differ in temporal and frequency structure, and what they reveal about irregularities in the ISM. Pulsars can be examined in a number of different ways as a function of frequency: time variability (both short and long term), DM changes, pulse broadening, angular extent, and Faraday rotation. Intra-day variable sources (IDVs) are another major topic of the book. Although many variable sources clearly exhibit intrinsic changes, IDVs are generally believed to result from scintillation effects. They require source sizes on the ten micro-arcsec scale, the most extreme cases having profound implications for source lifetimes and emission mechanisms. Finally, a dozen contributions describe future large radio telescope projects, especially the Chinese FAST effort to build a 500 m spherical reflector of innovative design.

Comets are small bodies, but of great cosmic relevance. Given its pristine nature, they may preserve valuable and unique information on thechemical and physical processes that took place in theearly solar system, and that may be occurring in the formation of other planetary systems. They might have even played a very important role in the origin of life on Earth. Beyond that, since ancient times comets have inspired awe, superstition, and also curiosity anddebate. Their sudden apparitions challenged the long-held view of the immutability of the heavens, which triggered a long debate on whether comets had a heavenly or terrestrial nature. Therefore, comets have a prominent role in the history of scienti?cthought, that goes back to the most ancient civilizations. The last apparition of comet Halley in 1986 was a landmark since it arouse a great expectation in the scienti?c community and in the public at large. For the ?rst time, a ?otilla of spacecrafts visited a comet. Agreat number of popular and technical books were written on Halley, and comets in general, around the mid-eighties. The interest in comets never subsided after Halley's passage which is re?ected in the large volume of printed material on these bodies. I have taken the challenge to write a new book on comets that summarizes most of the recent advances on thesubject, including my own workdeveloped during the last 25 years.

Impact cratering is an important geological process on all solid planetary bodies, and, in the case of Earth, may have had major climatic and biological effects. Most terrestrial impact craters have been erased or modified beyond recognition. However, major impacts throw ejecta over large areas of the Earth's surface. Recognition of these impact ejecta layers can help fill in the gaps in the terrestrial cratering record and at the same time provide direct correlation between major impacts and other geological events, such as climatic changes and mass extinctions. This book provides the first summary of known distal impact ejecta layers

This book contains the latest results on the plasma environment of Mars and its interaction with the solar wind. These results include mapping of the plasma environment with the instruments on Mars Express and Mars Global Surveyor, the latest numerical simulations, and theoretical studies. This comprehensive examination of the Mars environment also sets the stage for the interpretation of the Venus Express measurements that are now becoming available.

This volume considers the role comets may have played in the origins and evolution of life. This is the only book dealing in depth with this subject. It is particularly relevant in light of recent investigations of Halley's comet, of new insights into organic synthesis in meteorites and comets, and of new results of numerical simulations of cometary orbits and impacts on Earth. The book is intended as a comprehensive review of current research.

When the stream of plasma emitted from the Sun (the solar wind) encounters Earth's magnetic field, it slows down and flows around it, leaving behind a cavity, the magnetosphere. The magnetopause is the surface that separates the solar wind on the outside from the Earth's magnetic field on the inside. Because the solar wind moves at supersonic speed, a bow shock must form ahead of the magnetopause that acts to slow the solar wind to subsonic speeds. Magnetopause, bow shock and their environs are rich in exciting processes in collisionless plasmas, such as shock formation, magnetic reconnection, particle acceleration and wave-particle interactions. They are interesting in their own right, as part of Earth's environment, but also because they are prototypes of similar structures and phenomena that are ubiquitous in the universe, having the unique advantage that they are accessible to in situ measurements. The boundaries of the magnetosphere have been the target of direct in-situ measurements since the beginning of the space age. But because they are constantly moving, changing their orientation, and undergoing evolution, the interpretation of single-spacecraft measurements has been plagued by the fundamental inability of a single observer to unambiguously distinguish spatial from temporal changes. The boundaries are thus a prime target for the study by a closely spaced fleet of spacecraft. Thus the Cluster mission, with its four spacecraft in a three-dimensional configuration at variable separation distances, represents a giant step forward. This 20th volume of the ISSI Space Science Series represents the first synthesis of the exciting new results obtained in the first few years of the Cluster mission.

This volume explores the cross-linkages between the kinetic processes and macroscopic phenomena in the solar atmosphere, which are at the heart of our current understanding of the heating of the closed and open corona and the acceleration of the solar wind. The focus lies on novel data, on theoretical models that have observable consequences through remote sensing, and on near-solar and inner-heliosphere observations, such as anticipated by the upcoming Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe missions, which are currently developed by the international community. This volume is aimed at students and researchers active in solar physics and space science. Previously published in Space Science Reviews journal, Vol. 172, Nos. 1-4, 2012.

This text comprises selected lectures presented in the 9th course of the International School of Cosmic-Ray Astrophysics held at the Ettore Majorana Centre in Erice, Sicily, May 7-18, 1994. Devoted to problems and prospects in high-energy astrophysics and cosmology, the major areas explored are: gamma- ray, X-ray, and neutrino astronomies; cosmic rays; pulsars and supernova remnants; and cosmology, as well as cosmogony. Among the principal developments in gamma-ray astrophysics are those generated by the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Cosmic neutrinos at MeV energies, i.e. those from the Sun and from Supernova 1987a are discussed, as well as neutrino masses in astrophysics. The source composition of cosmic rays and extensive air shower experiments receive special attention. The early universe according to COBE data, and as viewed by theorists of cosmology, is reviewed.

Careers in astronomy for women (as in other sciences) were a rarity in Britain and Ireland until well into the twentieth century. The book investigates the place of women in astronomy before that era, recounted in the form of biographies of about 25 women born between 1650 and 1900 who in varying capacities contributed to its progress during the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are some famous names among them whose biographies have been written before now, there are others who have received less than their due recognition while many more occupied inconspicuous and sometimes thankless places as assistants to male family members. All deserve to be remembered as interesting individuals in an earlier opportunity-poor age. Placed in roughly chronological order, their lives constitute a sample thread in the story of female entry into the male world of science.

The book is aimed at astronomers, amateur astronomers, historians of science, and promoters of women in science, but being written in non-technical language it is intended to be of interest also to educated readers generally.

This book deals with the astrophysics and spectroscopy of the interstellar molecules. In the introduction, overview and history of interstellar observations are described in order to help understanding how the modern astrophysics and molecular spectroscopy have been developed interactively. The recent progress in the study of this field is briefly summarized. Furthermore, the basic knowledge of molecular spectroscopy, which is essential to correctly comprehend the astrophysical observations, is presented in a compact form.

Supernovae, hypernovae and gamma-ray bursts are among the most energetic explosions in the universe. The light from these outbursts is, for a brief time, comparable to billions of stars and can outshine the host galaxy within which the explosions reside. Most of the heavy elements in the universe are formed within these energetic explosions. Surprisingly enough, the collapse of massive stars is the primary source of not just one, but all three of these explosions.
As all of these explosions arise from stellar collapse, to understand one requires an understanding of the others. Stellar Collapse marks the first book to combine discussions of all three phenomena, focusing on the similarities and differences between them. Designed for graduate students and scientists newly entering this field, this book provides a review not only of these explosions, but the detailed physical models used to explain them from the numerical techniques used to model neutrino transport and gamma-ray transport to the detailed nuclear physics behind the evolution of the collapse to the observations that have led to these three classes of explosions.

The book's principal aim is to clarify fundamental concepts, decipher mathematical structures used to model space-time and relativistic worlds, and to disclose their physical meaning. After each chapter, philosophical implications of the presented material are commented upon.Both special and general theories of relativity are presented in the book with the stress on their global aspects. Although global mathematical methods are extensively used throughout the book, the definitions of new concepts, short comments and examples make reading smooth without the need to consult other textbooks or review papers.

This Symposium on fundamental stellar properties was held to honour Emeritus Professor Robert Hanbury Brown on the occasion of his 80th birthday. The speakers described current advances in interferometry, astrometry, spectroscopy and in theoretical models of stellar atmospheres and interiors. The emphasis was on the critical assessment of the quality, accuracy, and prospects for improvement of the observational data and theoretical models, on the outstanding problems in stellar astrophysics, and on the feasibility of achieving the observational and theoretical advances required for their solution. These proceedings should be of interest to researchers and graduate students in all fields of astrophysics.

This review emerged from several interdisciplinary meetings and schools gathering a group of astronomers, geologists, biologists, and chemists, attempting to share their specialized knowledge around a common question: how did life emerge on Earth? Their ultimate goal was to provide some kind of answer as a prerequisite to an even more demanding question: is life universal? The resulting state-of-the-art articles were written by twenty-five scientists telling a not-so linear story, but on the contrary, highlighting problems, gaps, and controversies. Needless to say, this approach yielded no definitive answers to both questions. However, by adopting a chronological approach to the question of the emergence of life on Earth, the only place where we know for sure that life exists; it was possible to break down this question into several sub-topics that can be addressed by the different disciplines.

The main chapters of this review present the formation and evolution of the solar system (3); the building of a habitable planet (4); prebiotic chemistry, biochemistry, and the emergence of life (5); the environmental context of the early Earth (6); and the ancient fossil record and early evolution (7). The concluding chapter (9) provides the highlights of the review and presents the different points of view about the universality of life. Two pedagogical chapters are included; one on chronometers (2), another in the form of a "frieze" (8) which summarizes in graphical form the present state of knowledge about the chronology of the emergence of life on Earth, before the Cambrian explosion.