This present book discusses the application of the methods to astrophysical data from different perspectives. In this book, the reader will encounter interesting chapters that discuss data processing and pulsars, the complexity and information content of our universe, the use of tessellation in astronomy, characterization and classification of astronomical phenomena, identification of extragalactic objects, classification of pulsars and many other interesting chapters. The authors of these chapters are experts in their field and have been carefully selected to create this book so that the authors present to the community a representative publication that shows a unique fusion of artificial intelligence and astrophysics.

At the XXIX IAU General Assembly held in Honolulu from 3-14 August 2015, the meetings known as Special Sessions and Joint Discussions were replaced by new 'Focus Meetings'. Astronomy in Focus XXIXA presents the most relevant contributions from the Focus Meetings together with summaries of all the accepted papers and posters. It covers the meetings on the following areas: dynamical problems in extrasolar planet science; astronomical heritage; scholarly publishing in astronomy; statistics and exoplanets; the exploration of small worlds; ground and space astrophysics and heliophysics; laboratory astrophysics; brightness variations of the Sun and Sun-like stars; astronomy for development; and mitigating the threats of light pollution and radio frequency interference. The publications Astronomy in Focus XXIXA (together with its companion, XXIXB), the proceedings of the six main Scientific Symposia and Reports on Astronomy: Commission Legacy Reports, fully cover the XXIX IAU General Assembly.

At the XXIX IAU General Assembly held in Honolulu from 3-14 August 2015, the meetings known as Special Sessions and Joint Discussions were replaced by new 'Focus Meetings'. Astronomy in Focus XXIXB presents the most relevant contributions from the Focus Meetings together with summaries of all the accepted papers and posters. It covers the following topics: the legacy of Planck; x-ray surveys of the hot and energetic cosmos; stellar physics in galaxies; stellar explosions; gravitational waves and structure formation; the search for water and life's building blocks; red supergiants in the local Universe; advances in stellar physics from asteroseismology; scale-free processes in the Universe; and the frontiers of our understanding of cluster and galaxy evolution. The publications Astronomy in Focus XXIXB (together with its companion, XXIXA), the proceedings of the six main Scientific Symposia and Reports on Astronomy: Commission Legacy Reports, fully cover the XXIX IAU General Assembly.

IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration) is the first NASA MIDEX mission and the first mission dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere. This volume offers detailed descriptions of the IMAGE instrumentation and of the image inversion techniques used to interpret the data. Also included are chapters on the IMAGE science objectives, the spacecraft design and capabilities, science and mission operations, and the processing and distribution of IMAGE's nonproprietary data products.

The last years have seen a symbiosis of the fields of elementary particle physics and the astrophysics of the early universe. This text presents the background of the subjects and the latest developments at a level suitable for final year undergraduates and beginning graduate students. The first chapters cover the properties and interactions of elementary particles followed by discussion of the early universe, including inflation, dark matter and dark energy, and the growth of the galactic structure. The final chapters discuss cosmic rays and particle physics in the stars. The close relation between particle interactions and large scale development of the cosmos is a constant theme in the text, with emphasis on the interplay between experiment and theory.
This book is an enlarged and updated version of the first edition published five years ago. In a rapidly evolving field, emphasis has of course been placed on the most recent developments. However, the opportunity has also been taken to re-arrange the material and present it in more detail and at somewhat greater length.

Very-high-energy astrophysics studies the most energetic photons in the sky allowing the exploration of the violent and extreme non-thermal phenomena in the Universe. Significant advances in knowledge have been made in this field using ground-based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) as detectors to study the very-high-energy physical processes in the Universe. This book reviews the progress in the field since the advent of the second generation IACTs in around 2004.Going through the scientific highlights obtained by the three current instruments of this kind, H.E.S.S., VERITAS and MAGIC, operating now for more than ten years, this book presents a state-of-the-art knowledge in four areas of modern astrophysics and cosmology, namely the origin of the cosmic rays, the physic of compact objects and their resulting relativistic outflows, gamma-ray cosmology and the search for dark matter. Along with a detailed review of the outstanding scientific outcome, a summary of the key technological developments that yielded to the recognized success of the technique is also provided.This book is written for young academics in the fields of astrophysics, high energy physics and cosmology. At the same time, it can serve as a source of reference for the expert in the field.

This thesis presents two significant results in the field of precision measurements in low-energy nuclear physics. Firstly, it presents a precise half-life determination of 11C, leading to the most precise ft-value for a beta decay transition between mirror nuclides, an important advance in the testing of the electroweak sector of the Standard Model. Secondly, it describes a high-precision mass measurement of 56Cu, a critical nucleus for determining the path of the astrophysical rapid-proton capture process, performed by the author using the LEBIT Penning trap at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. This new measurement resolves discrepancies in previously-reported calculated mass excesses. In addition, the thesis also presents the construction and testing of a radio-frequency quadrupole cooler and buncher that will be part of the future N = 126 factory at Argonne National Laboratory aimed at producing nuclei of interest for the astrophysical rapid-neutron capture process for the first time.

A total eclipse of the Sun is the most awesome sight in the heavens. Totality takes you to eclipses of the past, present, and future, and lets you see--and feel--why people travel to the ends of the Earth to observe them.
An absolutely indispensable resource for anyone who plans to observe an eclipse, and a must read for all astronomy buffs, this superb new edition brims with the anecdotes, experiences, and advice of many veteran eclipse observers. Indeed, it is the best guide and reference book on solar eclipses ever written, packed with information on how to observe them; how to photograph and videotape them; why they occur; their history and mythology; how eclipses revealed the workings of the Sun and made Einstein famous; and when and where to see future eclipses. Totality once again features the spectacular photography of Fred Espenak, who runs the NASA Eclipse Home Page and is the best-known and respected of all eclipse calculators and information sources. His many stunning color photographs illuminate this unparalleled exploration of eclipses. The volume has been updated to include current information on upcoming eclipses, with new chapters on the total eclipses due in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2017, plus all new chapters on how to photograph, video record, and process your eclipse images, with emphasis on the new generation of digital cameras.
Strikingly illustrated with stunning photographs and more than a hundred maps and diagrams, here is everything you need to know about eclipses of the sun, in an accurate, clearly written, and entertaining volume that can be read by lay people and astronomers with ease and enjoyment.

The aim of this book is to give graduate students an overview of quantum gravity but it also covers related topics from astrophysics. Some well-written contributions can serve as an introduction into basic conceptual concepts like time in quantum gravity or the emergence of a classical world from quantum cosmology. This makes the volume attractive to philosophers of science, too. Other topics are black holes, gravitational waves and non-commutative extensions of physical theories.

This book introduces the modern field of 3+1 numerical relativity. The book has been written in a way as to be as self-contained as possible, and only assumes a basic knowledge of special relativity. Starting from a brief introduction to general relativity, it discusses the different concepts and tools necessary for the fully consistent numerical simulation of relativistic astrophysical systems, with strong and dynamical gravitational fields. Among the topics discussed in detail are the following; the initial data problem, hyperbolic reductions of the field equations, guage conditions, the evolution of black hole space-times, relativistic hydrodynamics, gravitational wave extraction and numerical methods. There is also a final chapter with examples of some simple numerical space-times. The book is aimed at both graduate students and researchers in physics and astrophysics, and at those interested in relativistic astrophysics.

This thesis focuses on ULF (Ultra-low-frequency) waves' interaction with plasmasphere particles and ring current ions in the inner magnetosphere. It first reports and reveals mutual effect between ULF waves and plasmasphere using Van Allen Probes data. The differences and similarities of different ring current ions interacting with ULF waves are extensively explored using Cluster data, which provides a potential explanation for O+-dominated ring current during the magnetic storms. Furthermore, this thesis finds a method to study the phase relationship between ULF waves and drift-bounce resonant particles, and proposes that the phase relationship can be used to diagnose the parallel structure of standing wave electric field and energy transfer directions between waves and particles. The findings in this thesis can significantly promote our understanding of ULF waves' role in the dynamics of inner magnetosphere.

This book discusses analytic and asymptotic methods relevant to radiative transfer in dilute media, such as stellar and planetary atmospheres. Several methods, providing exact expressions for the radiation field in a semi-infinite atmosphere, are described in detail and applied to unpolarized and polarized continuous spectra and spectral lines. Among these methods, the Wiener-Hopf method, introduced in 1931 for a stellar atmospheric problem, is used today in fields such as solid mechanics, diffraction theory, or mathematical finance. Asymptotic analyses are carried out on unpolarized and polarized radiative transfer equations and on a discrete time random walk. Applicable when photons undergo a large number of scatterings, they provide criteria to distinguish between large-scale diffusive and non-diffusive behaviors, typical scales of variation of the radiation field, such as the thermalization length, and specific descriptions for regions close and far from boundaries. Its well organized synthetic view of exact and asymptotic methods of radiative transfer makes this book a valuable resource for both graduate students and professional scientists in astrophysics and beyond.

Cluster was one of the two missions - the other being the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) - constituting the Solar Terrestrial Science Programme (STSP), the first `cornerstone' of ESA's Horizon 2000 Programme. After the catastrophic Ariane-5 accident on 4 June 1996 which destroyed the four Cluster spacecraft, the European Space Agency Science Programme Committee gave approval to refurbish the spare Cluster spacecraft and make it ready for flight. This new spacecraft, considered to be the first of a new fleet, is called Phoenix. In the meantime various options to repeat the Cluster four-point measurements are being studied. Since Phoenix, as the fifth Cluster spacecraft, will be equipped with the spare Cluster experiments, the instrumentation articles in this book are still appropriate to the new mission. Furthermore, the objectives of the recovery mission, the ground systems, the ground observation program and the theory and modelling efforts all remain unchanged. Thus this series of articles will continue to be essential to the Cluster community and to the general scientific community as the recovery mission is implemented.

This thesis summarizes the original analysis work performed by the author on data from XENON1T, a search for dark matter with a ton-size noble liquid detector operated at Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory in Italy. The nature of dark matter is one of the most open and pressing questions of modern physics, and the unique data acquired with this detector allows the exploration and investigation of several potential scenarios. The analysis of Dr. Shockley searches for a class of elusive elementary particles that interact with the electrons of ordinary atoms, instead of the nucleus. Results of the analysis present, with high confidence, an excess with respect to the expected background. Beyond more mundane explanations, this additional rate of electron-mediated interactions might be a first hint of physics beyond the standard model. This accessible thesis provides details on the detector, the data, and the theory, delivering to the reader an in-depth and coherent picture of the search for physics beyond the standard model.

These peer-reviewed NIC XV conference proceedings present the latest major advances in nuclear physics, astrophysics, astronomy, cosmochemistry and neutrino physics, which provide the necessary framework for a microscopic understanding of astrophysical processes. The book also discusses future directions and perspectives in the various fields of nuclear astrophysics research. In addition, it also includes a limited number of section of more general interest on double beta decay and dark matter.

Here is an accurate and readable translation of a seminal article by Henri Poincare that is a classic in the study of dynamical systems popularly called chaos theory. In an effort to understand the stability of orbits in the solar system, Poincare applied a Hamiltonian formulation to the equations of planetary motion and studied these differential equations in the limited case of three bodies to arrive at properties of the equations' solutions, such as orbital resonances and horseshoe orbits. Poincare wrote for professional mathematicians and astronomers interested in celestial mechanics and differential equations. Contemporary historians of math or science and researchers in dynamical systems and planetary motion with an interest in the origin or history of their field will find his work fascinating.

This book is a collection of lectures given in August 2006 at the Les Houches Summer School on Particle Physics and Cosmology: the Fabric of Spacetime . It provides a pedagogical introduction to the various aspects of both particle physics beyond the Standard Model and Cosmology of the Early Universe, covering each topic from the basics to the most recent developments.
. Provides a pedagogical introduction to topics at the interface of particle physics and cosmology
. Addresses each topic from the basis to the most recent developments
. Provides necessary tools to build new theoretical models addressing various issues both in cosmology and particle physics
. Covers the lectures by internationally-renowned and leading experts
. Faces the predictions of theoretical models against collider experimental data as well as from cosmological observations

R.N. Wilson's two-volume treatise on reflecting telescope optics has become a classic in its own right. It is intended to give a complete treatment of the subject, addressing the professional in research and industry as well as students of astronomy and amateur astronomers. This first volume, Basic Design Theory and its Historical Development, is devoted to the theory of reflecting telescope optics and systematically recounts the historical progress. The author's approach is morphological, with strong emphasis on the historical development. The book is richly illustrated including spot-diagrams analysing special systems in modern form. In this second edition, the historical section has been revised. Various improvements to the text have been made and new systems such as the 4-lens corrector of Delabre and the LADS corrector are now covered in this volume. The concluding part II treats Manufacture, Testing, Alignment, Modern Techniques.

Discusses recent advances and new problems in the exploration of the Sun's interior structure, solar dynamics and dynamo, mechanisms of sunspot and active regions formation, sources of solar irradiance variations and links between the subsurface dynamics, flaring and CME activity.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) mission has provided a large amount of new data on solar dynamics and magnetic activities during the rising phase of the current and highly unusual solar cycle. These data are complemented by the continuing SOHO mission and by ground-based observatories that include the GONG helioseismology network and the New Solar Telescope. Also, the observations are supported by realistic numerical simulations on supercomputers. This unprecedented amount of data provides a unique opportunity for multi-instrument investigations that address fundamental problems of the origin of solar magnetic activity at various spatial and temporal scales. This book demonstrates that the synergy of high-resolution multi-wavelength observations and simulations is a key to uncovering the long-standing puzzles of solar magnetism and dynamics.

This volume is aimed at researchers and graduate students active in solar physics and space science.

Originally published in Solar Physics journal, Vol. 287/1-2, 2013.

The review papers in this volume provide an in-depth examination of complex astrophysical phenomena of star formation via multi-wavelength observations and modeling. Among the fundamental issues discussed in the book are: The role of gravity and magnetized turbulence in the formation and evolution of molecular clouds The stellar feedback (supernovae, HII regions, winds, cosmic rays) in regulating star formation The origin of the stellar initial mass function and its universality across various environments Jets, magnetic fields and high energy particles in stellar clusters The origin of the first stars and black holes The goal of these papers is to review the major processes governing star formation and to investigate how they are interlinked. In doing so, they provide an in-depth look at the tremendous theoretical and observational progress that has been made in the recent past and also outline future perspectives. Previously published in Space Science Reviews in the Topical Collection "Star Formation"

The nature of dark matter remains one of the preeminent mysteries in physics and cosmology. It appears to require the existence of new particles whose interactions with ordinary matter are extraordinarily feeble. One well-motivated candidate is the axion, an extraordinarily light neutral particle that may possibly be detected by looking for their conversion to detectable microwaves in the presence of a strong magnetic field. This has led to a number of experimental searches that are beginning to probe plausible axion model space and may reveal the axion in the near future. These proceedings discuss the challenges of designing and operating tunable resonant cavities and detectors at ultralow temperatures. The topics discussed here have potential application far beyond the field of dark matter detection and may be applied to resonant cavities for accelerators as well as designing superconducting detectors for quantum information and computing applications. This work is intended for graduate students and researchers interested in learning the unique requirements for designing and operating microwave cavities and detectors for direct axion searches and to introduce several proposed experimental concepts that are still in the prototype stage.

The Golden Oldies series of the journal General Relativity and Gravitation reprints important papers in general relativity theory that were published 30 or more years ago and are either hard to get hold of, or were originally printed in a language other than English. They play a key part in making these important papers readily accessible today, in the language that has now become the lingua franca of scientific publication. The value of this reprinting is enhanced by an accompanying editorial note for each paper, which briefly explains the significance of the work and where it has subsequently led to, together with a biographical note about the author or authors. This volume presents a selection of 14 rarities among the Golden Oldies grouped in the three categories "Basic results in differential geometry and general relativity," "Discussion of physical effects" and "Basic exact solutions and their interpretation." Researchers in the field will appreciate having these important papers collected in one book for the first time. Reprinted from the journal General Relativity and Gravitation.

Special and General Relativity are concisely developed together with essential aspects of nuclear and particle physics. Problem sets are provided for many chapters, making the book ideal for a course on the physics of white dwarf and neutron star interiors. Norman K. Glendenning is Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Nuclear Science Division, Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books.

The Optical Society of America Conference on Applications of High Fields and Short Wavelength Sources, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, from March 20-22, 1997, was an exceptionally exciting conference. This conference was the seventh in a series of topical con ferences, held every two years, which are devoted to the generation and application of high field and short wavelength sources. The meeting was truly international in scope, with equal participation from both within and outside of the US. In the past two years, there has been dramatic progress in both laser and x-ray coher ent sources, both fundamental and applied. The 1997 meeting highlighted these advances, which are summarized in sections 1 and 2 of this volume. Terawatt-class lasers are now avail able in the UV or at high repetition rates. Michael Perry (LLNL) presented a keynote talk on petawatt class lasers and their applications in inertial confinement fusion, while Jorge Rocca (Colorado State University) presented a keynote talk on tabletop soft-x-ray lasers. Genera tion and measurement techniques are becoming very sophisticated throughout the UV and x ray region of the spectrum, and coherent sources have been extended to wavelengths below 30A. Phase control in the x-ray region is also now possible, and new phase-matching schemes in the UV have been experimentally demonstrated. It is clear that a new field of x-ray nonlin ear optics will deveiop rapidly over the next few years."

Written for amateur physicists, "SlipString Drive" takes you through the basics of string and M-theories so that you can embark on a "faster than light" voyage without violating physics. By using gravity waves to completely isolate volumes of spacetime from the rest of the universe, author Andrew L. Bender proposes a method of travel-similar to going through a wormhole-that could be possible within fifty years. He also details a unique engine design for producing the gravity waves necessary to travel in such a manner.

In "SlipString Drive," Bender describes how ships using this method of propulsion would appear to those outside of the ship's partially "gravitationally isolated" region of space while maneuvering at slow speeds. Bender also discusses novel uses for such a vessel, such as saving humanity from comets to supernovae.

Bender also offers a "Membrane Theory of Gravity." A modification of M-theory, this new theory unifies all forces, and predicts dark matter and energy. It also theorizes how the acceleration of our universe will change over time, along with other predictions that could prove modified M-theory correct observationally-a feat no other cosmologist has yet achieved. Finally, Bender hypothesizes how the universe will end, and how our descendants could survive that fateful occurrence.