"I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years ...kneeling before you Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals ...I abjure, curse, detest the aforesaid errors and heresies."
Galileo Galilei in Rome, 22 June 1633, before the men of the Inquisition.
In the small village of Arcetri, on a wooded hillside just south of Florence, an old man sat writing his will. He had to make a journey to Rome and wanted to be prepared for every eventuality. If the plague did not get him on the road, the strain of travelling might finish him off; in addition he had been ill most of the autumn, with dizziness, stomach pains and a serious hernia. And even if he survived these difficulties, and the cold winter wind from the Apennines did not give him pneumonia, he had no idea what awaited him in Rome, only that his arrival was unlikely to be celebrated with a special mass.

The mathematician and physicist Galileo Galilei is one of the most famous scientists of all times. The story of his life and times, of his epoch-making experiments and discoveries, of his stubbornness and pride, of his patrons in the house of Medici, of his enemies and friends in their struggle for truth - all is brought vividly to life in this book. Atle NA ss has written a gripping account of one of the great figures in European history.
He was awarded the Brage Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in Norway.

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The volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the sociology of time. Based on selected contributions from leading writers, it illustrates the range of issues and perspectives which define the field. The volume traces distinct traditions of time analysis in social science and uses these to explain, for example, the development of capitalist time-consciousness, the ways we structure time in organizations and institutions, and how our time perceptions change in line with changes in culture. The book is for those who wish to understand how time comes to condition our everyday actions and affairs.

Harbord's Glossary of Navigation was for more than 100 years the leading handbook for the navigation on the seas. Original edition of 1862, this is a reprint of the second edition 1874.

Neutron stars hold a central place in astrophysics, not only because they are made up of the most extreme states of the condensed matter, but also because they are, along with white dwarfs and black holes, one of the stable configurations that stars reach at the end of stellar evolution. Neutron stars posses the highest rotation rates and strongest magnetic fields among all stars. They radiate prolifically, in high energy electromagnetic radiation and in the radio band.

This book is devoted to the selected lectures presented in the 6th NATO-ASI series entitled "The Electromagnetic Spectrum of Neutron Stars" in Marmaris, Turkey, on 7-18 June 2004. This ASI is devoted to the spectral properties of neutron stars. Spectral observations of neutron stars help us to understand the magnetospheric emission processes of isolated radio pulsars and the emission processes of accreting neutron stars. This volume includes spectral information from the neutron stars in broadest sense, namely neutrino and gravitational radiation along with the electromagnetic spectrum. We believe that this volume can serve as graduate level of text including the broad range of properties of neutron stars.

The knowledge of the amount and nature of matter present in the Universe is undoubtedly one of the most relevant topics in astrophysics and cosmology. It started with the pioneering work of Zwicky in 1933, who found the need for a large amount of dark matter in the Coma cluster. An important step has been the recent finding through the observation of distant type Ia supernovae of the presence of a significant vacuum energy density causing an accelerating expansion of the Universe. Nevertheless, the nature of most of the matter in the Universe is still unknown. Its solution requires the interplay of several fields of astrophysics and cosmology as well as particle physics, all of which are covered in this volume: Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, large scale structures, galaxy clusters, intergalactic absorption, dark matter components of galaxies, globular clusters, supernovae of type Ia distance measurements, gravitational lensing, X-ray observations, Lyman-alpha observations, dark energy, direct detection of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS), detection of neutrino oscillations, particle candidates for dark matter, and Big Bang nucleosynthesis of baryonic matter.

Therefore, this volume presents a very useful synopsis of all constituents of matter in the Universe.

The book reviews methods for the numerical and statistical analysis of astronomical datasets with particular emphasis on the very large databases that arise from both existing and forthcoming projects, as well as current large-scale computer simulation studies. Leading experts give overviews of cutting-edge methods applicable in the area of astronomical data mining. Case studies demonstrate the interplay between these techniques and interesting astronomical problems. The book demonstrates specific new methods for storing, accessing, reducing, analysing, describing and visualising astronomical data which are necessary to fully exploit its potential.

In July 1992, over 300 astronomers attended the Third Tetons Summer School on the subject of "The Environment and Evolution of Galaxies". This book presents 28 papers based on invited review talks and a panel discussion on "The Nature of High Redshift Objects". The major themes include: the interstellar and intergalactic medium, galaxy formation and evolution, cooling flows, quasars and radiation backgrounds, and interactions between galaxies/AGNs and their environment. Recent advances with the ROSAT, COBE and Hubble Space Telescope are discussed, together with current theoretical developments. The tutorial nature of the papers should make this book a useful supplement for professional astonomers, graduate students, and senior undergraduates. As with previous Tetons conferences, this book provides both the current state of observational and theoretical research and material complementary to courses in extragalactic and interstellar astrophysics.

The Relativists and Cosmologists in India organized an international conference in Goa, India, in 1987, known as the International Conference on Gravitation and Cosmology (ICGC-87). Encouraged by the success of this conference it was decided to have such a meeting periodically, once in every four years. Accordingly, ICGC- 91 was held at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, India. The third International Conference on Gravitation and Cosmology, (ICGC-95) was held at the Inter-University centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, IUCAA, Pune, India during December 13 - 19, 1995. This series of conferences is co-sponsored by the Indian Association for General Relativity and Gravitation (lAGRG). The Conference had 16 plenary lectures and five workshops altogether. There were three plenary lectures per day and two workshops running parallel each day. We were fortunate in getting plenary speakers who are leading experts in their respective fields drawn from all over the world. The conference was attended by about 105 persons from India and 55 from abroad. We thank all the contributors who have taken time to write up their lectures amidst their busy schedule. We regret we could not get the contributions of a few plenary speakers. We would also like to thank the members of Organizing Committees who have worked hard to make this conference a success.

In the nineteenth century the beauty of the night sky is the source of both imaginative wonder in poetry and political and commercial power through navigation. The Romantic Imagination and Astronomy examines the impact of astronomical discovery and imperial exploration on poets including Barbauld, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Rossetti.

The continuing success of helio- and asteroseismology in studying the internal structure and dynamics of the Sun, and of other single stars, has been highlighted in recent years by many topical meetings. The present Proceedings document the first Seismology symposium ever held in conjunction with an IAU General Assembly. This substantially influenced the layout of the scientific programme and demonstrates the vitality of this field of astronomy. The invited reviews are intended to address an audience that includes many non-specialists. Therefore, this volume is particularly valuable as an introduction to the general concepts of the field, and for conveying the excitement that comes with discussions of the most recent observational and theoretical results. There are two chapters on the many facets of asteroseismology, which also compare solar and stellar achievements. A major focus of the symposium was the new developments resulting from the observations of unprecedented quality obtained from global multi-site networks, and especially from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory SoHO, currently continuing its observations from the Lagrangian point L1. From the center of the Sun to its outer layers, the reader will learn how modern diagnostic techniques reveal the inextricable links between the complex structure of the interior and atmosphere of our nearest star. The book is recommended for undergraduates, postgraduates, and professionals with a strong interest in modern developments in astrophysics.

THE EDITORS: DAVID L. BLOCK AND KENNETH C. FREEMAN (SOC CO-CHAIRS), IVANIO PUERARI, ROBERT GROESS AND LIZ K. BLOCK 1. Harvard College Observatory, 1958 The past century has truly brought about an explosive period of growth and discovery for the physical sciences as a whole, and for astronomy in particular. Galaxy morphology has reached a renaissance . . The year: 1958. The date: October 1. The venue: Harvard College Observatory. The lecturer: Walter Baade. With amazing foresight, Baade penned these words: "Young stars, supergiants and so on, make a terrific splash - lots of light. The total mass of these can be very small compared to the total mass of the system". Dr Layzer then asked the key question: " . . . the discussion raises the point of what this classification would look like if you were to ignore completely all the Population I, and just focus attention on the Population II . . . " We stand on the shoulders of giants. The great observer E. E. Barnard, in his pioneering efforts to photograph the Milky Way, devoted the major part of his life to identifying and numbering dusty "holes" and dust lanes in our Milky Way. No one could have dreamt that the pervasiveness of these cosmic dust masks (not only in our Galaxy but also in galaxies at high redshift) is so great, that their "penetration" is truly one of the pioneering challenges from both space-borne telescopes and from the ground.

Much of what is known about the universe came from the study of celestial shadows. This book looks in detail at the way eclipses and other celestial shadows have given us amazing insights into the nature of the objects in our solar system and how they are even helping us discover and analyze planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. A variety of eclipses, transits, and occultations of the mooons of Jupiter and Saturn, Pluto and its satellite Charon, asteroids and stars have helped astronomers to work out their dimensions, structures, and shapes - even the existence of atmospheres and structures of exoplanets. Long before Columbus set out to reach the Far East by sailing West, the curved shadow of the Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse revealed that we inhabit a round world, a globe. More recently, comparisons of the sunlit and Earthlit parts of the Moon have been used to determine changes in the Earth's brightness as a way of monitoring possible effects in cloud coverage which may be related to global warming. Shadows were used by the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes to work out the first estimate of the circumference of the Earth, by Galileo to measure the heights of the lunar mountains and by eighteenth century astronomers to determine the scale of the Solar System itself. Some of the rarest and most wonderful shadows of all are those cast onto Earth by the lovely "Evening Star" Venus as it goes between the Earth and the Sun. These majestic transits of Venus occur at most two in a century; after the 2012 transit, there is not a chance to observe this phenomenon until 2117, while the more common sweep of a total solar eclipse creates one of the most dramatic and awe-inspiring events of nature. Though it may have once been a source of consternation or dread, solar eclipses now lead thousands of amateur astronomers and "eclipse-chasers" to travel the globe in order to experience the dramatic view under "totality." These phenomena are among the most spectacular available to observers and are given their full due in Westfall and Sheehan's comprehensive study.

This Second Edition of Sun, Earth and Sky updates the popular text by providing comprehensive accounts of the most recent discoveries made by five modern solar spacecraft during the past decade. Their instruments have used sound waves to peer deep into the Sun's inner regions and measure the temperature of its central nuclear reactor, and extended our gaze far from the visible Sun to record energetic outbursts that threaten Earth. Breakthrough observations with the underground Sudbury Neutrino Observatory are also included, which explain the new physics of ghostly neutrinos and solve the problematic mismatch between the predicted and observed amounts of solar neutrinos. This new edition of Sun, Earth and Sky also describes our recent understanding of how the Sun's outer atmosphere is heated to a million degrees, and just where the Sun's continuous winds come from. As humans we are more intimately linked with our life-sustaining Sun than with any other astronomical object, and the new edition therefore provides modern interpretations of ozone depletion and global warming that are related to both the Sun and to human activities. introduces the Sun and its physics, and describes all aspects of the Sun's interaction with us on Earth.

Light scattering and absorption by small homogeneous particles can be worked-out exactly for spheres and infinite cylinders. Homogeneous particles of irregular shapes, when averaged with respect to rotation, have effects that can in general be well-approximated by reference to results for these two idealised cases. Likewise, small inhomogeneous particles have effects similar to homogeneous particles of the same average refractive index. Thus most problems can be solved to a satisfactory approximation by reference to the exact solutions for spheres and cylinders, which are fully stated here in the early part of the book. The sum of scattering and absorption, the extinction, is too large to be explained by inorganic materials, provided element abundances in the interstellar medium are not appreciably greater than solar, H 0 and NH3 being essentially excluded in the 2 general medium, otherwise very strong absorptions near 3p, m would be observed which they are not. A well-marked extinction maximum in the ultraviolet near 2200A has also not been explained satisfactorily by inorganic materials. Accurately formed graphite spheres with radii close to O.02p, m could conceivably provide an explanation of this ultraviolet feature but no convincing laboratory preparation of such spheres has ever been achieve

It has been more than five decades ago that Henk van de Hulst predicted the observability of the 21-cm line of neutral hydrogen (HI ). Since then use of the 21-cm line has greatly improved our knowledge in many fields and has been used for galactic structure studies, studies of the interstellar medium (ISM) in the Milky Way and other galaxies, studies of the mass distribution of the Milky Way and other galaxies, studies of spiral struc ture, studies of high velocity gas in the Milky Way and other galaxies, for measuring distances using the Tully-Fisher relation etc. Regarding studies of the ISM, there have been a number of instrumen tal developments over the past decade: large CCD's became available on optical telescopes, radio synthesis offered sensitive imaging capabilities, not only in the classical 21-cm HI line but also in the mm-transitions of CO and other molecules, and X-ray imaging capabilities became available to measure the hot component of the ISM. These developments meant that Milky Way was no longer the exclusive playground for ISM studies and that by reaching out to other galaxies astronomy had gained the advantage of having an "outside" view, though at the expense of giving up some linear resolution. Studies of the ISM in other galaxies are intimately connected to studies of the ISM in the Milky Way."

Astronomical photographs contain an enormous amount of information. This presents extremely interesting problems when one wishes to produce digitized sky atlases, to archive the digitized material, to develop sophisticated devices to do the digitizing, and to create software to process the vast amounts of data. All these activities are necessary to be able to carry out astronomy work. One such activity is the important, large-scale optical identification of objects which also emit radiation at other wavelengths. Other activities of the past decade include a multiplicity of surveys that have been made on galaxies and clusters of galaxies. This book treats, in five sections, the existing and future surveys, their digitization and their impact on astronomy. It is designed to serve as a reference for people in the field and for those who wish to engage in using or producing sky surveys.

For decades experiments conducted on space stations like MIR and the ISS have been gathering data in many fields of research in the natural sciences, medicine and engineering. The EU-sponsored Ulisse Internet Portal provides metadata from space experiments of all kinds and links to the data. Complementary to the portal, this book will serve as handbook listing space experiments by type of infrastructure, area of research in the life and physical sciences, data type, what their mission was, what kind of data they have collected and how one can access this data through Ulisse for further research.

The book will provide an overview of the wealth of space experiment data that can be used for research, and will inspire academics (e.g. those looking for topics for their PhD thesis) and research departments in companies for their continued development.

The NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "White Dwarfs", held in June 2002 at the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy, continues the long tradition of the European Work- shop series on "White Dwarfs", which started in Kiel in 1974 by Prof. Volker Weidemann. Since then, similar workshops were organized al- most every two years: Frascati (1976), Tel Aviv (1978), Paris (1981), Kiel (1984), Frascati (1986), Toulouse (1990), Leicester (1992), Kiel (1994), Blanes (1996), Troms0 (1998) and Newark-Delaware (2000). The proceedings of these meetings, together with those from the IAU Colloquia in Rochester (NY, 1979) and Hanover (New Hampshire, 1988), represent a unique record of how the research field of white dwarfs has developed in more a quarter of a century. We hope that the present volume, which contains a large number ofcontributions on different topics, will provide an updated and broadened view of this very active field of research. th The format of this workshop, which is the 13 of the series, keeps that ofprevious meetings: givingthe same amount oftime to all speak- ers, no parallel sessions and no limitations on the number of posters.

Chaos theory plays an important role in modern physics and related sciences, but -, the most important results so far have been obtained in the study of gravitational systems applied to celestial mechanics. The present set of lectures introduces the mathematical methods used in the theory of singularities in gravitational systems, reviews modeling techniques for the simulation of close encounters and presents the state of the art about the study of diffusion of comets, wandering asteroids, meteors and planetary ring particles. The book will be of use to researchers and graduate students alike.

On May 18-21, 2004, the Max-Planck-Society's Harnack-Haus in Dahlem, Berlin hosted the international symposium "Exploring the Cosmic Frontier: Astrophysical Instruments for the 21st Century." The symposium was dedicated to exploring the complementarity and synergies between different branches of astrophysical research, by presenting and discussing the fundamental scientific problems that will be addressed in the next few decades.

The Symposium .Symmetries in Science VI: From the Rotation Group to Quantum Algebras. was held at the Cloister Mehrerau, Bregenz, Austria, during the period August 2-7, 1992. The Symposium was held in honor of Professor Lawrence C. Biedenharn on the occasion of his 70th birthday. During the academic year 1966/67 I worked as research associate with Larry at Duke University and we have ever since maintained close contact. It was thus natural for me to take the initiative and to organize this Symposium in honor of Larry as a great scientist and friend. The response which the Symposium received showed the favorable reaction by the scientific community to the opportunity provided by the Symposium to honor our colleague, teacher and friend. Equally, the scientific contributions contained in this volume illustrate the high esteem in which he is held. I wish to thank all the scientists who participated in the Symposium and who contributed to this volume. It is due to their commitment that the Symposium was successful. Finally I need to thank those who provided financial and logistical assistance to the Symposium: Dr. John H. Guyon, President of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Dr. Russell R. Dutcher, Dean, College of Science at SIUC, Dr. Maurice A. Wright, Chairman, Department of Physics, SIUC, Dr. Victoria J. Molfese, Office of Research Developement and Administration, SIUC, as well as Dr. Martin Purtscher, Landeshauptmann, Land Vorarlberg Dr. Guntram Lins, Landesrat, Land Vorarlberg."

A few years ago, a real break-through happened in observational astronomy: the un derstanding of the effect of atmospheric turbulence on the structure of stellar images, and of ways to overcome this dramatic degradation. This opened a route to diffraction-limited observations with large telescopes in the optical domain. Soon, the first applications of this new technique led to some outstanding astrophysical results, both at visible and infrared wavelengths. Yet, the potential of interferometric observations is not fully foreseeable as the first long-baseline arrays of large optical telescopes are being built or cOIIllnissioned right now. In this respect a comparison with the evolution of radio-astronomy is tempting. From a situation where, in spite of the construction of giant antennas, low angular resolution was prevailing, the introduction of long baseline and very long baseline interferometry and the rapid mastering of sophisticated image reconstruction techniques, have brought on a nearly routine basis high dynamic range images with milliarcseconds resolution. This, of course, has completely changed our views of the radio sky."

1. The Workshop and this Tome In the excellent bucolic setting of SchloB Ringberg in Upper Bavaria, over 50 scientists assembled during the week of 23-28 September 1996 to discuss recent results, both theoretical and observational in nature, on the large scale structure of the Universe. Such a topic is perhaps nowadays far too encompassing, and is essentially all of what we used to call "observational cosmology. " The original philosophy of the organization of this meeting was deliber ated aimed at the younger community and their contributions. As a conse quence, the content of the presentations was refreshingly new, as it should be. In spite of the deficiences caused by the lack of certain key researchers in this field, for one reason or another, the final result was rewarding to all. Although the conference was held in Fall 1996, the contributions contained herein were submitted as late as Spring 1998, thus the content maintains some degree of trendiness. Originally the current volume was to be a "proceedings. " This refers to the usual archival tome that fills one's shelf and is rarely consulted, except to see the canonical group photo, which by the way, we also have. Nevertheless, I wanted something more than that. Although the field is rapidly changing, with so-called facts in a state ofconstant volubility, now is a good time for reflection prior to the commencement ofthe Sloan Survey, presumably the definitive large-scale program of low- to moderate-redshift galaxies in our lifetime."