Astronomy isthemostancientsciencehumanshavepracticedonEarth. Itisascienceofextremesandoflargenumbers:extremesoftime-fromthe big bang to in?nity -, of distances, of temperatures, of density and masses, ofmagnetic?eld,etc.Itisasciencewhichishighlyvisible,notonlybecause stars and planets are accessible in the sky to the multitude, but also - cause the telescopes themselves are easily distinguishable, usually on top of scenic mountains, and also because their cost usually represent a subst- tialproportionofthenation'sbudgetandofthetaxpayerscontributionsto that budget. As such, astronomy cannot pass unnoticed. It touches on the origins of matter, of the Universe where we live, on life and on our destiny. It touches on philosophy as well as on religion. Astronomy is the direct c- tactofhumankindwithitsoriginsandtheimmensityofuniversalnature.It is indeed a science of observation where experimentation is practically - possible and which is ruled by mathematics, physics, chemistry, statistical analysis and modelling, while o?ering the largest number of veri?cations of the most advanced theories of fundamental physics such as general r- st ativity and gravitation. At the beginning of the 21 century astronomy is clearly a multidisciplinary activity touching on all aspects of science. It is therefore logical that in the past and still now, astronomy has attracted the most famous scientists, be they pure observers, mathematicians, physicists, biologists, experimentalists, and even politicians.

Luminous hot stars represent the extreme upper mass end of normal stellar evolution. Before exploding as supernovae, they live out their lives of a few million years with prodigious outputs of radiation and stellar winds, dramatically affecting both their evolution and environments. A detailed introduction to the topic, this book connects the astrophysics of massive stars with the extremes of galaxy evolution represented by starburst phenomena. A thorough discussion of the physical and wind parameters of massive stars is presented. HII galaxies, their connection to starburst galaxies, and the contribution of starburst phenomena to galaxy evolution through superwinds, are explored. The book concludes with the wider cosmological implications, including Population III stars, Lyman break galaxies and gamma-ray bursts, for each of which massive stars are believed to play a crucial role. This book is ideal for graduate students and researchers in astrophysics interested in luminous hot stars and galaxy evolution.

The solar atmosphere, above the Sun's surface layers, reaches mega-kelvin temperatures and high levels of dynamic activity through processes involving a pervading magnetic field. This book explores one of the principal means of understanding the solar atmosphere, its ultraviolet and soft X-ray emission. The ultraviolet and X-ray spectra of the Sun's atmosphere provide valuable information about its nature - the heat and density of its various parts, its dynamics, and chemical composition. The principles governing spectral line and continuous emission, and how spectral studies lead to deductions about physical properties, are described, together with spacecraft instrumentation from Skylab, SolarMax, Yohkoh, SOHO, TRACE, and Hinode. With introductions to atomic physics and diagnostic techniques used by solar spectroscopists, a list of emission lines in ultraviolet and soft X-ray regions, and a glossary of terms, this is an ideal reference for graduate students and researchers in astrophysics and solar physics.

The past two decades have seen remarkable advances in observations of sunspots and their magnetic fields, in imaging of spots and fields in distant stars and in associated theoretical models and numerical simulations. This book provides a comprehensive combined account of the properties of sunspots and starspots. It covers both observations and theory, and describes the intricate fine structure of a sunspot's magnetic field and the prevalence of polar spots on stars. The book includes a substantial historical introduction and treats solar and stellar magnetic activity, dynamo models of magnetic cycles, and the influence of solar variability on the Earth's magnetosphere and climate. This volume is a valuable reference for graduate students and specialists in solar and stellar physics, astronomers, geophysicists, space physicists and experts in fluid dynamics and plasma physics.

Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) was both a key figure in the development of astrophysics during the early part of the twentieth century and a notable philosopher of science. Originally published in 1928, this book contains the substance of the Gifford Lectures which were delivered by Eddington at the University of Edinburgh in January to March 1927. The text discusses the philosophical outcome of fundamental changes in scientific thought related to areas such as the theory of relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. This is a highly insightful title that will be of value to anyone with an interest in Eddington, the development of physics and the philosophy of science.

This book is aimed at theoretical and mathematical physicists and mathematicians interested in modern gravitational physics. I have thus tried to use language familiar to readers working on classical and quantum gravity, paying attention both to difficult calculations and to existence theorems, and discussing in detail the current literature. The first aim of the book is to describe recent work on the problem of boundary conditions in one-loop quantum cosmology. The motivation of this research was to under stand whether supersymmetric theories are one-loop finite in the presence of boundaries, with application to the boundary-value problemsoccurring in quantum cosmology. Indeed, higher-loop calculations in the absence of boundaries are already available in the litera ture, showing that supergravity is not finite. I believe, however, that one-loop calculations in the presence of boundaries are more fundamental, in that they provide a more direct check of the inconsistency of supersymmetric quantum cosmology from the perturbative point of view. It therefore appears that higher-order calculations are not strictly needed, if the one-loop test already yields negative results. Even though the question is not yet settled, this research has led to many interesting, new applications of areas of theoretical and mathematical physics such as twistor theory in flat space, self-adjointness theory, the generalized Riemann zeta-function, and the theory of boundary counterterms in super gravity. I have also compared in detail my work with results by other authors, explaining, whenever possible, the origin of different results, the limits of my work and the unsolved problems."

This volume, together with its two companion volumes, originated in a study commis sioned by the United States National Academy of Sciences on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. A committee composed of Tom Holzer, Dimitri Mihalas, Roger Ulrich and myself was asked to prepare a comprehensive review of current knowledge concerning the physics of the sun. We were fortunate in being able to persuade many distinguished scientists to gather their forces for the preparation of 21 separate chapters covering not only. solar physics but also relevant areas of astrophysics and solar-terrestrial relations. In proved necessary to divide the chapters into three separate volumes that cover three different aspects of solar physics. Volumes I and III are concerned with "The Solar Interior" and with "Astrophysics and Solar-Terrestrial Relations." This volume, devoted to "The Solar Atmosphere," covers not only the chromosphere and corona but also the principal phenomena usually referred to as "solar activity." The emphasis is on identifying and analyzing the relevant physical processes, but each chapter also contains a great deal of descriptive material."

Investigation of the interplanetary dust cloud is characterized by contributions from quite different methods and fields, such as research on zodiacal light, meteors, micrometeoroids, asteroids, and comets. Since the earth's environment and interplanetary space became accessible to space vehicles these interrelations are clearly evident and extremely useful. Space measurements by micrometeoroid detectors, for example, provide individual and eventually detailed information on impact events, which however are limited in number and therefore restricted in statistical significance. On the other hand, zodiacal light measurements involve scattered light from many particles and therefore provide global information about the average values of physical properties and spatial distribution of interplanetary grains. Additional knowledge stems from lunar samples and from dust collections in the atmosphere and in deep sea sediments. All these sources of complementary information must be put together into a synoptical synthesis. This also has to take into account dynamical aspects and the results of laboratory investigations concerning physical properties of small grains. Such considerable effort is not merely an academic exercise for a few specialists interested in the solar dust cloud. Since this same cloud exclusively allows direct in-situ acess to investigate extraterrestrial dust particles over a wide range of sizes and materials, it provides valuable information for realistic treatment of dust phenomena in other remote cosmic regions such as in dense molecular clouds, circumstellar dust shells, and even protostellar or protoplanetary systems.

Proceedings of the 83rd Colloquium of the International Astronomical Union held in Rome, Italy, June 11-15, 1984

The next major step in millimetre astronomy, and one of the highest-priority items in radio astronomy today, is a large millimetre array with a collecting area 2 of up to 10 000 m . A project of this scale will almost certainly require inter national collaboration, at least within Europe, and possibly with other major partners elsewhere. In order to establish a focal point for this project within Europe, a study has been undertaken by the Institut de Radio Astronomie Mil Ii met rique (IRAM), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), The Onsala Space Observatory (OSO), and The Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy (NFRA). In the context of this project, a workshop attended by some 100 participants was held at ESO Garching on December 11-13, 1995 to discuss the scientific advances such an array will make possible. Throughout the three days of the workshop the strong enthusiasm for the concept of a large millimetre array in the southern hemisphere (the Large South ern Array, or LSA) was obvious, and it became clear that such a facility would have a profound impact on almost all areas of observational astrophysics. It was particularly clear that, since their main science drivers (cosmology, and the origins of galaxies, stars and planets) are the same, and their angular resolutions and sensitivities similar, the LSA and the VLT would strongly complement each other.

V. DOMINGO Space Science Department, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands The XIVth ESLAB Symposium on 'Physics of Solar Variations' was held in Scheveningen (The Netherlands) on 16-19 September, 1980. The objective of the symposium was to discuss from an interdisciplinary point of view the different types of changing phenomena that occur in the Sun and the effects that such changes may have on the Earth environment with the aim that a global look at the varying phenomena may improve the understanding of the underlying physical processes. Solar physicists of different background, investigators in solar radiometry and atmospheric scientists gathered to review the progress that has been made in the study of the different areas of solar variations. The proceedings of this symposium constitute an up-to-date collection of information on the variations of the Sun. The first and largest section of the proceedings is devoted to the physics of the Sun. An overview of how the observed variations contribute to the development of the theory of the solar structure is followed by several papers on recent results on the study of solar oscillations, a unique probe of Sun's interior. Several papers then summarise the theoretical and experimental efforts in the study of the solar magnetic cycle and its consequences. Finally the expansion of the corona with the formation of the solar wind and some characteristics of solar wind variations are described.

The book contains presentations of recent and ongoing research on inverse problems and its application to engineering and physical sciences. The articles are structured around three closely related topics: Inverse scattering problems, inverse boundary value problems, and inverse spectral problems. The applications range from quantum and electromagnetic scattering to medical imaging, geophysical sounding of the Earth, and non-destructive material evaluation. The book gives an up-to-date presentation of the most recent developments in these rapidlychanging and evolving fields of applied research. The contributors of the volume give extra emphysis to the pedagogical aspects of their presentation to make this collection eysily accessible to graduate students as well as to people working on nearby fields of research.

The enormous amounts of energy radiated from the active nuclei of galaxies vary on short time scales, and the emission regions are difficult to observe. To provide a complete understanding of these phenomena a wide variety of studies is presented in this volume. The contributions are broadly divided between line and continuum variability, with observational results, methodological approaches, and theoretical models accompanying each. The final part is devoted to the important aspect of propagation-induced variability.

This book treats the classical problem of gravitational physics within Einstein's theory of general relativity. It presents basic principles and equations needed to describe rotating fluid bodies, as well as black holes in equilibrium. It then goes on to deal with a number of analytically tractable limiting cases, placing particular emphasis on the rigidly rotating disc of dust. The book concludes by considering the general case using powerful numerical methods that are applied to various models, including the classical example of equilibrium figures of constant density. Researchers in general relativity, mathematical physics, and astrophysics will find this a valuable reference book on the topic. A related website containing codes for calculating various figures of equilibrium is available at www.cambridge.org/9781107407350.

The scope of the book is to give an overview of the history of astroparticle physics, starting with the discovery of cosmic rays (Victor Hess, 1912) and its background (X-ray, radioactivity). The book focusses on the ways in which physics changes in the course of this history. The following changes run parallel, overlap, and/or interact: - Discovery of effects like X-rays, radioactivity, cosmic rays, new particles but also progress through non-discoveries (monopoles) etc. - The change of the description of nature in physics, as consequence of new theoretical questions at the beginning of the 20th century, giving rise to quantum physics, relativity, etc. - The change of experimental methods, cooperations, disciplinary divisions. With regard to the latter change, a main topic of the book is to make the specific multi-diciplinary features of astroparticle physics clear.

The discipline of nonlinear dynamics has developed explosively in all areas of physics. This comprehensive primer summarizes the main developments in the mathematical theory of dynamical systems, chaos, pattern formation and complexity. An introduction to mathematical concepts and techniques is given in the first part of the book, before being applied to stellar, interstellar, galactic and large scale complex phenomena in the Universe. Regev demonstrates the possible application of ideas including strange attractors, Poincare sections, fractals, bifurcations, and complex spatial patterns, to specific astrophysical problems. This self-contained text will appeal to a broad audience of astrophysicists and astronomers who wish to understand and apply modern dynamical approaches to the problems they are working on. It provides researchers and graduate students with the investigative tools they need to fully explore chaotic and complex phenomena.

Among the widely agreed facts of physics in the late nineteenth century was the existence of luminiferous ether: the medium through which light was thought to travel. Theorised to be a highly rarefied substance, the ether accounted for the movement of light, gravity and even heat across a vacuum. It also had great implications for spiritualism. Where thought was not proven to be a result of chemistry in the brain, the presence of ether allowed for the idea that cognition and emotion might exist independently of a physical body. First published in 1925, this monograph by the eminent physicist and ether advocate Sir Oliver Lodge (1851 1940) was written for the non-scientific reader. With a focus on straightforward explanations rather than mathematical theory, his book still represents a fascinating introduction to the topic today.

At close inspection every galaxy appears to have its own individuality.A galaxy can be warped, lop-sided, doubly-nucleated, boxy or disky, ... in its own specific, peculiar way. Hence, for a complete description, galaxy taxonomy may ask for finer and finer classification schemes. However, for some applications it may be more fruitful to let details aside and focus on some global properties of galaxies. One is then seeking to measure just a few quantities for each galaxy, a minimum set of globalobservables that yet captures some essential aspect of these objects. One very successful example of this approach is offered by the scaling rela tions of galaxies, the subject of the international workshop held at ESO head quarters in Garching on November 19-21, 1996. Discovered in the late 1970's, the Tully-Fisher relation for the spirals and the Faber-Jackson relation, or its more recent version the Fundamental Plane, for ellipticals have now become flourishing fields of astronomical research in their own right, as well as being widely used tools for a broad range of astronomical investigations. The work shop was designed to address three key issues on galaxy scaling relations, i.e., their Origins, Evolution, and Applications in astronomy. The Origins of galaxy scaling relations still escape our full understanding."

The controversial question of whether the majority of the narrow absorption lines observed in QSO spectra represent cosmological intervening systems or ejecta from the QSO themselves is settled. QSO absorption line spectroscopy, initially a mere technique, has matured into an essential extragalactic research tool for understanding the content of the Universe at redshifts between 0 and 4, and beyond. The only previous important meeting devoted to "QSO Absorption Lines" was held in May 1987 at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. Since that time, nearly a decade ago, research has been ex tremely active in this now well-established field of astrophysics. Theoretical stud ies and simulations have taken advantage of the constant progress in computer technology, and during these last few years, the observational results have bene fited largely from the new facillities offered by the Hubble Space Telescope in the UV wavelength range and the Keck Telescope for high-resolution spectroscopy.

The existence of jets emanating from the central sources of radio galaxies and quasars was perhaps the most important discovery for our understanding of the nature of active galactic nuclei. These proceedings present reviews and research papers on extragalactic radio sources. The book begins witha discussion of the phenomenology and models of radio sources. The main partis devoted to detailed studies of jets by VLBI, to the information obtained about the structure of the central source as deduced from variability studies, to production, confinement and velocity of jets as well as to numerical simulations of the jet phenomenon. Reviews of the two best studied jets - those in the radio galaxy M87 and the quasar 3C273 - illustrate our current observational picture of extragalactic radio jets in all accessible wavelength ranges. A section on the influence of the environment on radio galaxies concludes the book. This topical volume addresses researchers and graduate students in astrophysics.

This volume collects contributions to the workshop on "Turbulence Modeling and Vortex Dynamics, Istanbul," where engineers, physicists, and mathematicians discussed the statistical description of turbulence. They cover practical aspects as well as rigorous mathematics. This book will be a source of reference for many years for those working in this most fascinating field of scientific modeling.

Exciting results are blooming, thanks to a convergence between unprecedented asteroseismic data obtained by the satellites CoRoT and KEPLER, and state-of-the-art models of the internal structure of red giants and of galactic evolution. The pulsation properties now available for thousands of red giants promise to add valuable and independent constraints to current models of structure and evolution of our galaxy. Such a close connection between these domains opens a new very promising gate in our understanding of stars and galaxies. In this book international leaders in the field offer a wide perspective of the recent advancements in: Asteroseismology of red giants Models of the atmosphere, internal structure, and evolution of red giants Stellar population synthesis and models of the Milky Way

Helioseismology has enabled us to probe the internal structure and dynamics of the Sun, including how its rotation varies in the solar interior. The unexpected discovery of an abrupt transition - the tachocline - between the differentially rotating convection zone and the uniformly rotating radiative interior has generated considerable interest and raised many fundamental issues. This volume contains invited reviews from distinguished speakers at the first meeting devoted to the tachocline, held at the Isaac Newton Institute. It provides a comprehensive account of the understanding of the properties and dynamics of the tachocline, including both observational results and major theoretical issues, involving both hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic behaviour. The Solar Tachocline is a valuable reference for researchers and graduate students in astrophysics, heliospheric physics and geophysics, and the dynamics of fluids and plasmas.

Recent state-of-the-art technologies in fabricating low-loss optical and mechanical components have significantly motivated the study of quantum-limited measurements with optomechanical devices. Such research is the main subject of this thesis. In the first part, the author considers various approaches for surpassing the standard quantum limit for force measurements. In the second part, the author proposes different experimental protocols for using optomechanical interactions to explore quantum behaviors of macroscopic mechanical objects. Even though this thesis mostly focuses on large-scale laser interferometer gravitational-wave detectors and related experiments, the general approaches apply equally well for studying small-scale optomechanical devices.

The author is the winner of the 2010 Thesis prize awarded by the Gravitational Wave International Committee.

This volume covers different aspects of recent theoretical and observational work on magnetic reconnection, a fundamental plasma-physical process by which energy stored in magnetic field is converted, often explosively, into heat and kinetic energy. This collection of papers from the fields of solar and space physics, astrophysics, and laboratory plasma physics is especially timely in view of NASA's upcoming Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, which will use Earth's magetosphere as a laboratory to test, through in-situ measurement of the plasma, energetic particles, and electric and magnetic fields, the various and sometimes competing models and theories of magnetic reconnection. This volume is aimed at researchers in solar physics, magnetospheric physics and plasma physics. Previously published in Space Science Reviews journal, Vol. 160/1-4, 2011.