Reflecting the results of twenty years; experience in the field of multipurpose flights, this monograph includes the complex routes of the trajectories of a number of bodies (e.g., space vehicles, comets) in the solar system.
A general methodological approach to the research of flight schemes and the choice of optimal performances is developed. Additionally, a number of interconnected methods and algorithms used at sequential stages of such development are introduced, which allow the selection of a rational multipurpose route for a space vehicle, the design of multipurpose orbits, the determination of optimal space vehicle design, and ballistic performances for carrying out the routes chosen. Other topics include the practical results obtained from using these methods, navigation problems, near-to-planet orbits, and an overview of proven and new flight schemes.

This book explains the fundamental concepts and theoretical techniques used to understand the properties of quantum systems having large numbers of degrees of freedom. A number of complimentary approaches are developed, including perturbation theory; nonperturbative approximations based on functional integrals; general arguments based on order parameters, symmetry and Fermi liquid theory; and stochastic methods. Written for students with no prior background in many-body theory, this text is intended for physicists in solid-state physics, field theory, atomic physics, condensed matter physics, quantum chemistry and nuclear physics.

The strength of Professor Varisco's work lies in his combination of ethnographic fieldwork among highland Yemeni farmers with an extensive study of medieval Arabic manuscripts on folk astronomy and agriculture. The opening articles discuss the astronomical concept of the 'lunar stations' in pre-Islamic Arabia and as developed in Arab astronomy and almanac lore; subsequent ones expand on the significance of this for an agricultural society, and examine a unique corpus of Yemeni agricultural almanacs, dating from the Rasulid period (13th-15th centuries) to the present. A further theme is that of traditional Yemeni agriculture, with studies on irrigation practices, plough cultivation, sorghum production, and indigenous plant protection methods, as well as the use of star calendars for seasonal markers.

From an historical perspective, this text presents an entirely non- mathematical introduction to astronomy from the first endeavours of the ancients to the current developments in research enabled by cutting edge technological advances. Free of mathematics and complex graphs, the book nevertheless explains deep concepts of space and time, of relativity and quantum mechanics, and of origin and nature of the universe. It conveys not only the intrinsic fascination of the subject, but also the human side and the scientific method as practised by Kepler, defined and elucidated by Galileo, and then demonstrated by Newton.

Sitting still in a quiet room, you might just be able to convince yourself that nothing is moving. But air currents swirl about you. Blood rushes through your veins. The atoms in your chair jiggle furiously. And the planet you are on is whizzing through space 35 times faster than the speed of sound. In Zoom, Bob Berman takes a thrilling tour around the wondrous and myriad motions that shape every aspect of the universe. Spanning astronomy, geology, biology, meteorology and history, he explains how clouds stay aloft, how the earth's rotation curves a ball's flight, how a mosquito's familiar whine is tuned to a perfect A sharp, how the day gets longer every century, and much more.

Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae is both the biography of an extraordinary human being and the story of the greatest quest in the history of astronomy since the Copernican revolution. The book is a revealing portrait of scientific genius, an incisive engaging history of ideas, and a shimmering evocation of what we see when gazing at the stars.
Born in 1889 and reared in the village of Marshfield, Missouri, Edwin Powell Hubble-star athlete, Rhodes Scholar, military officer, and astronomer- became one of the towering figures in twentieth-century science. Hubble worked with the great 100-inch Hooker telescope at California's Mount Wilson Observatory and made a series of discoveries that revolutionized humanity's vision of the cosmos. In 1923 he was able to confirm the existence of other nebulae (now known to be galaxies) beyond our own Milky Way. By the end of the decade, Hubble had proven that the universe is expanding, thus laying the very cornerstone of the big bang theory of creation. It was Hubble who developed the elegant scheme by which the galaxies are classified as ellipticals and spirals, and it was Hubble who first provided reliable evidence that the universe is homogeneous, the same in all directions as far as the telescope can see.
An incurable Anglophile with a penchant for tweed jackets and English briars, Hubble, together with his brilliant and witty wife, Grace Burke, became a fixture in Hollywood society in the 1930s and 40s. They counted among their friends Charlie Chaplin, the Marx brothers, Anita Loos, Aldous and Maria Huxley, Walt Disney, Helen Hayes, and William Randolph Hearst. Albert Einstein, a frequent visitor to Southern California, called Hubble's work "beautiful" and modified his equations on relativity to account for the discovery that the cosmos is expanding.

In Ten Short Lessons in Time Travel, Brian Clegg takes us on a fascinating and up-to-date tour of the workings of the universe that suggest the possibility of journeying back and forth through time.

Einstein's special theory of relativity told us that time travel to the future was possible, and later his general theory of relativity showed us that loops in spacetime could exist, meaning that we might be able to bend time backwards, too. But what are the practicalities of making time travel possible? What do we still need to know? How do we deal with paradoxical twists in time - and could quantum physics hold the answer? From the imagination of novelists to current research, 10 Short Lessons in Time Travel is a grand tour of the essential lessons in this game-changing area of physics.

About the series: The Pocket Einstein series is a collection of essential pocket-sized guides for anyone looking to understand a little more about some of the most important and fascinating areas of science in the twenty-first century. Broken down into ten simple lessons and written by leading experts in their field, discover the ten most important takeaways from those areas of science you've always wanted to know more about.

TheinternationalconferenceHowdoestheGalaxywork? Agalactictertulia rd th with Don Cox and Ron Reynolds, was held during the week of 23 to 27 of June 2003 in the marvelous city of Granada, Spain. This week marked the beginningofoneofthehottestsummersthatwehaveeverlived, butincontrast, the meeting was one of the coolest events that we can remember! First, it certainly wasa?rstclassscienti?creunion, withanexcellent program, talented speakers, and alive discussions in a friendly atmosphere. Second, the whole event was embedded in the passionate Andalucian way of life, a true tertulia, well seasoned with tasty tapas and perfectly marinated in cool and dry sherry wine. Third, the celebration was framed by some of the most beautiful settings thatonecanimagine; weenjoyedthemagni?centsplendoroftheAlhambra,the unique Muslim-Jewish-Christian ?avor of the Albaicin, and the magical gipsy heartbeat of Sacromonte. Last but not least, all discussions, whether they were duringthesessionsoratabartable,weresprinkledwiththecharmandwitofthe twoguestsofhonor: DonCoxandRonReynolds. Theideaofhavingascienti?c feast to celebrate their 60th birthday in Granada was actually conceived at a bar table in Seville, with plenty of manzanilla at hand, a couple of summers ago. That, perhaps, was the dif?cult part of the project. The rest was relatively easy to achieve because Don and Ron are not only remarkable astronomers but they are also great human beings. Indeed, we had a very positive response from all parties involved: every person we talked to was enthusiastic about the celebration, and wanted to give their own point of view in this tertulia.

Series Information:
Garland Encyclopedias in the History of Science

The brilliant German mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), one of the founders of modern astronomy, revolutionized the Copernican heliocentric theory of the universe with his three laws of motion: that the planets move not in circular but elliptical orbits, that their speed is greatest when nearest the sun, and that the sun and planets form an integrated system. This volume contains two of his most important works: The Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (books 4 and 5 of which are translated here) is a textbook of Copernican science, remarkable for the prominence given to physical astronomy and for the extension to the Jovian system of the laws recently discovered to regulate the motions of the Planets. Harmonies of the World (book 5 of which is translated here) expounds an elaborate system of celestial harmonies depending on the varying velocities of the planets.

1. Data from the ROSAT Observatory. 2. The EXOSAT Database System. 3. IRAS. 4. Databases from Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). 5. The Many faces of the Archive of the International Ultraviolet Explorer Satellite. 6. Data Archive System for the Hubble Space Telescope. 7. Database Aspects of the Guide Star Catalog. 8. The HIPPARCOS INCA Database. 9. The SIMBAD Astronomical Database. 10. The NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database. 11. The ESO Archive Project. 12. Archives of the Isaac Newton Group, La Palma and Westerbork Observatories. 13. Archiving at NRAO's VLA and VLBA Telescopes. 14. ESIS A Science Information System. 15. The NASA Astrophysics Data System. 16. The NSSDC Services. 17. The Space Data Centre at RAL. 18. Database Applications in Starlink. 19. Database Applications in Astronet. 20. Database Services at the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre. 21. Astronomical Bibliography from Commercial Databases. 22. Astronomical Directories. 23. Science Networks: A Short Overview. 24. User Interfaces in Astronomy. 25. The FITS Data Format. List of Acronyms. Index.

Physically Speaking: A Dictionary of Quotations on Physics and Astronomy provides the largest published collection of quotations pertaining to physics and astronomy. Some quotes are profound, others are wise, some are witty but none are frivolous. Here you will find quotations from the most famous to the unknown. The extensive author and subject indexes provide you with the perfect tool for locating quotations for practical use or pleasure, and you will soon enjoy discovering what others have said on topics ranging from anti-matter to x-rays. This book can be read for pleasure or used as a handy reference by students, scientific readers, and the more general reader who is interested in who has said what on physics and astronomy.

An all-new collection of first-rate science experiments!

Are you having a hard time coming up with a good idea for the science fair? Do you want to earn extra credit in your science class? Or do you just want to learn more about how the universe really works? Janice VanCleave’s A+ Projects in Astronomy can help you, and the best part is it won’t involve any complicated or expensive equipment.

This step-by-step guide explores 30 different topics and offers dozens of experiment ideas. The book also includes charts, diagrams, and illustrations. Here are just a few of the subjects you’ll be investigating:

• The size and rotation of celestial bodies
• Eclipses and the true movements of the sun
• The apparent magnitude of the stars
• Orbital eccentricity
• Meteors and artificial satellites

You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to turn your own ideas into winning science fair projects!

Also available:

Janice VanCleave’s A+ Projects in Biology
Janice VanCleave’s A+ Projects in Chemistry
Janice VanCleave’s A+ Projects in Earth Science

This highly acclaimed study approaches the space race as a problem in comparative public policy. Drawing on published literature, archival sources in both the United States and Europe, interviews with many of the key participants, and important declassified material, such as the National Security Council's first policy paper on space, McDougall examines U.S., European, and Soviet space programs and their politics. Opening with a short account of Nikolai Kibalchich, a late nineteenth-century Russian rocketry theoretician, McDougall argues that the Soviet Union made its way into space first because it was the world's first "technocracy"--which he defines as "the institutionalization of technological change for state purpose." He also explores the growth of a political economy of technology in both the Soviet Union and the United States.

This book gathers selected and expanded contributions presented at the 4th Symposium on Space Optical Instruments and Applications, which was held in Delft, the Netherlands, on October 16-18, 2017. This conference series is organized by the Sino-Holland Space Optical Instruments Laboratory, a cooperative platform between China and the Netherlands. The symposium focused on key technological problems regarding optical instruments and their applications in a space context. It covered the latest developments, experiments and results on the theory, instrumentation and applications of space optics. The book is split into five main sections: The first covers optical remote sensing system design, the second focuses on advanced optical system design, and the third addresses remote sensor calibration and measurement. Remote sensing data processing and information extraction are then presented, followed by a final section on remote sensing data applications.

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.

From the second-century celestial models of Ptolemy to modern-day research institutes and quantum theory, this classic book offers a breathtaking tour of astronomy and the brilliant, eccentric personalities who have shaped it. From the first time mankind had an inkling of the vast space that surrounds us, those who study the universe have had to struggle against political and religious preconceptions. They have included some of the most charismatic, courageous, and idiosyncratic thinkers of all time. In Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris uses his unique blend of rigorous research and captivating narrative skill to draw us into the lives and minds of these extraordinary figures, creating a landmark work of scientific history.

Electromagnetic Meson Production at Low Energies; B.H. Schoch. Parity Violation in Electron Scattering; R.D. McKeown. Polarization in Leptoninduced Reactions; T.W. Donnelly. Quark Structure of the Nucleon and Nucleon Resonances; B. Metsch. Leptonic Production of Baryon Resonances; V.D. Burkert. Structure Functions of the Nucleon; T.J. Ketel. Nuclear Filtering and Quantum Color Transparency: An Introductory Review; J.P. Ralston. Photon and Meson Production in Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions; H. Loehner. Near Threshold Particle Production: A Probe of Resonancematter Formation in Heavy-ion Collisions; V. Metag. Quark Matter and Nuclear Collisions; H. Satz. The String Model of Nuclear Scattering: Theoretical Concepts; K. Werner. Introduction to the Dual Parton Model; A. Capella. Nucleon-Nucleon Bremsstrahlung; K. Nakayama. Index.

The twentieth century has been a remarkable epoch in the affairs of men, and this is no less true of astronomy, at once the oldest and most modern of the sciences. Sky watchers at the beginning of the century measured positions and predicted celestial motions in faithful but uninspired homage to the Muse Urania; nowadays, their descendents call on all the resources of modern science to probe the nature and evolution of a bewildering range of celestial objects. Man has even set out to call personally on his nearest neighbours in space. Professor Zdenek Kopal has lived and practised astronomy throughout this efflorescence of his subject. Born in Czechoslovakia just before the outbreak of the Great War, and educated in the classical European tradition, he knows well the days when scholars commanded such respect that astronomical congresses would be visited by Heads of State. Yet within his own lifetime, he has himself been recruited to play an important role in scientific preparations for a manned Moon landing. He has known and worked with some of the most highly respected practitioners of Modern Astromomy: Russell, Shapley, Urey in the United States, Eddington in Britain. His fine eye for detail, coupled with his strong sense of history, enable him to unfold through his personal recollections the development of his subject across the social changes of two world wars. Inspired by his grandfather, who would think nothing of walking sixty miles to theatrical performance, the young Kopal acquired a Wanderlust that has taken him in his career more than a dozen times rond the world. He has visited the most ancient observatories, observed solar eclipses in Japan and Java, helped to establish new institutions in Iraq and India, and commuted for many years between the Old and New Worlds. He has toiled in every corner of his chosen vinyard: as observer, outstanding theoretician, populariser, editor and teacher. During his thirty years as Professor of Astronomy at Manchester, he helped to educate over a hundered PhD students, many from the developing world, who have taken the torch of astronomy back to their home lands. In retirement, he continues to direct his efforts towards a better understanding of the Universe, and shows no sign of abandoning his life-long affair with the heavens. Professor Kopal has entitled his book Of Stars and Men, for he has delighted in the company of both throughout his life. The reader is invited to share with him the story of his birth, his education, his work and his travels; and to join with him in contemplating the history and possible future of his subject, and of civilisation itself.

The chief argument of this book, first published in 1990, is that Ibn al-Haytham's On the Configuration of the World is a non-technical expose of basic astronomical teachings: it was written in particular for those whose main interests were in the areas of philosophy and natural science and who, accordingly, had an interest in relating the mathematical devices employed by professional astronomers to the heavenly bodies mentioned in the philosophical literature. However, the primary reason for this publication is not the advancement of this thesis, but rather the presentation of the medieval texts themselves, normally so inaccessible to scholars and students alike.

This volume contains the papers presented at the Third Alexander von Humboldt Colloquium on Celestial Mechanics. The papers cover a large range of questions, from the behaviour of dust particles to the stability of the solar system as a whole. The motions of asteroids and their classification into families are also discussed. Specific topics addressed are KAM theory, chaotic motions, resonances, Lyapunov characteristic exponents, perturbation theory and numerical integration.

This book presents the basic fundamentals of descriptive archaeoastronomy and its application to the astronomical descriptions found in ancient Indian scriptures. Archaeoastronomy is a branch of positional astronomy that helps to determine the epochs of ancient astronomical alignments and special astronomical events. In this book, only the descriptions of special stellar alignments and events found in ancient texts can identify the antiquity of the descriptions. India possesses a large volume of ancient scriptures like Vedas and Puranas which contain many astronomical descriptions as in ancient India positional astronomy was well developed. The antiquities of these texts are determined through archaeoastronomical techniques. Major events like Mahabharata War are dated and using these dates a chronology of ancient India is determined. The astronomically determined chronology is compared with the results from various archaeological, palaeoclimatological, geological and genealogical investigations of ancient India. This introductory book interests readers interested in unveiling the mystery involved with the protohistory of this ancient civilization.

2D Gravity and Non-Perturbative Effects: Diffusion Equation, Continuum Limit and Universality in 2D Quantum Gravity; O. Alvarez, et al. On Triangles and Squares; C. Bachas. Non-Perturbative Effects in 2D Gravity and Matrix Modles; F. David. Integrable Models of 2D Quantum Gravity; P. Di Francesco, et al. Topological Strings and Loop Equations; R. Dijkgraaf, et al. The Two Matrix Model; M.R. Douglas. Action Principle and Large Order Behavior of Non-Perturbative Gravity; P. Ginsparg, et al. D = 1 Strings and String Field Theory: Matrix Models, String Field Theory and Topology; T. Banks. Multipoint Correlation Functions in One-Dimensional String Theory; D. Boulativ. The Penner Model and D = 1 String Theory J. Distler, et al. Non-Perturbative String Theory; D.J. Gross. Bosonic Strings and String Field Theories in One-Dimensional Target Space; V. Kazakov. Liouville Theory andD 1: Random Surfaces in Dimensions Larger than One; J. Ambjorn. On Gauge Invariances in Stochastic Quantization; L. Baulieu. The Quantum Group Structure of Quantum Gravity in Two Dimensions; J.L. Gervais. Notes on Quantum Liouville Theory and Quantum Gravity; N. Seiberg. 8 additional articles. Index.

The following topics are addressed: space astrometric missions, ground based optical techniques, very long baseline interferometric (VLBI) techniques, impact of these techniques on astrophysics and on geodynamics, and issues related to celestial and terrestrial reference frames. In the area of space optical astrometry, the reduction of one year of data from the Hipparcos mission shows excellent results for more than 40,000 stars. Recent developments in ground-based optical astrometry are concentrated on CCB meridian circles and transit instruments. The VLBI technique is the most powerful method to determine the earth rotation parameters, nutation series, and baseline lengths. More accurate celestial and terrestrial reference frames are needed and recent achievements in this field are presented, for example FK5 catalogues and a comparison of VLA and Hipparcos positions.