This volume has grown out of lectures addressing primarily graduate students and researchers working in related areas in both astrophysics and space sciences. All contributions are self-contained and do not require prior in-depth knowledge of solar physics. The result is a unique textbook that fulfills the needs of those wishing to have a pedagogic exposition of solar physics bringing them up-to-date in a field full of vitality and with exciting research.

For thousands of years, humans have wondered whether we're alone in the cosmos. Now, for the first time, we have the technology to investigate. The question should have an obvious answer: yes or no. But once you try to find life elsewhere, you realize it is not so simple. How do you find it over cosmic distances? What actually is life?

Astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger works from Carl Sagan’s former office at Cornell University, where she built a team of tenacious scientists from many disciplines to find life on faraway worlds, using Earth’s diverse biosphere and its history as a Rosetta Stone. With infectious enthusiasm, she provides an eye-opening insider’s guide to the most unusual exoplanets that have shaken our worldview – planets covered in oceans of lava, lonely wanderers lost in space, and others with more than one sun in their sky – as well as the best contenders for Alien Earths. She also shows how close imagined scifi worlds come to reality.

We live in an incredible new epoch of exploration. As our witty and knowledgeable tour guide, Professor Kaltenegger shows how we discover not merely new continents, like the explorers of old, but whole new worlds circling other stars – and how we could spot life there. Worlds from where aliens may even be gazing back at us. What if we're not alone?

Although the development of ideas about the motion and trajectory of comets has been investigated piecemeal, we lack a comprehensive and detailed survey of ph- ical theories of comets. The available works either illustrate relatively short periods in the history of physical cometology or portray a landscape view without adequate details. The present study is an attempt to review - with more details - the major physical theories of comets in the past two millennia, from Aristotle to Whipple. My research, however, did not begin with antiquity. The basic question from which this project originated was a simple inquiry about the cosmic identity of comets at the dawn of the astronomical revolution: how did natural philosophers and astronomers define the nature and place of a new category of celestial objects - comets - after Brahe's estimation of cometary distances? It was from this turning point in the history of cometary theories that I expanded my studies in both the pre-modern and modern eras. A study starting merely from Brahe and ending with Newton, without covering classical and medieval thought about comets, would be incomplete and leave the fascinating achievements of post-Newtonian cometology unexplored.

Taking both a theoretical and observational perspective, this book is an introduction to recent developments in the field of celestial mechanics. It emphasizes the application to extended celestial bodies and devotes much attention to rotational aspects. In particular, it explains the state of art for accurate modelling of the rotation of celestial bodies such as the Earth, the Moon, and Mercury, which involves principles related to hydrodynamics and geodesy. Comparisons between the light curves of the asteroids and their rotational state are made and spatial techniques leading to the determination of the Earth's gravitational field are explained. Also, the book provides a general overview of the collisional processes in the solar system and of the dynamics of the rings. It is addressed to graduate students and researchers in space sciences and celestial dynamics.

Growing evidence, based on observations from orbiters, landers and telescopes, indicates that Mars may still have numerous hidden water reservoirs. Moreover, from the point of view of habitability, Mars is a prime target for astrobiologists in search of extant or extinct microbial life because we know that life exists in eartha (TM)s permafrost regions, such as parts of Siberia and the Antarctic, which are the closest terrestrial analogues to Mars. Water on Mars and Life surveys recent advances made in research into water on Mars together with its astrobiological implications. This volume addresses not only scientists working in the field but also nonspecialists and students in search of a high-level but accessible introduction to this exciting field of research.

NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) was launched on August 25, 1997, carrying six high-resolution spectrometers that measure the abundances of the elements, isotopes, and ionic charge states of energetic nuclei in space. Data from these instruments is being used to measure and compare the composition of the solar corona, the nearby interstellar medium, and cosmic-ray sources in the Galaxy, and to study particle acceleration processes in a variety of environments. ACE also includes three instruments that monitor solar wind and energetic particle activity near the inner Lagrangian point, "1.5 million kilometers sunward of Earth, and provide continuous, real-time data to NOAA for use in forecasting space weather. Eleven of the articles in this volume review scientific progress and outline questions that ACE will address in solar, space-plasma, and cosmic-ray physics. Other articles describe the ACE spacecraft, the real-time solar-wind system, and the instruments used to measure energetic particle composition.

The SOHO-7 Workshop was held from 28 September through 1 October 1998 at the Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor, Maine. The primary topic of this Workshop was the impact of SOHO observations on our understanding of the nature and evolution of coronal holes and the acceleration and composition of the solar wind. The presentations and discussions occasionally went beyond this topic to include the impact of the reported research on other solar structures and the heliosphere. SOHO (the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA, was launched in December 1995 and began its science operations during the first few months of 1996. To many solar and space physicists, it was a great advantage that SOHO began itscomprehensive look at the Sun during the 1996 solar minimum. The qualitatively simple two-phase corona, with polar coronal holes expanding into the high-speed solar wind, and a steady equatorial streamer belt related somehow to the stochastic slow-speed solar wind, allowed various SOHO diagnostics to be initiated with a reasonably well understoodcircumsolar geometry. The analysis of subsequentSOHO measurements made during the rising phase of solar cycle 23 will continue to benefit from what has been learned from the first two years of data.

NASA's Genesis mission, launched on August 8, 2001 is the fifth mission in the Discovery series. Genesis addresses questions about the materials and processes involved in the origin of the solar system by providing precise knowledge of solar isotopic and elemental compositions for comparison with the compositions of meteoritic and planetary materials. This book describes the Genesis mission, the solar wind collector materials, the solar wind concentrator and simulations of its performance, the plasma ion and electron instruments, and the way these two instruments are used to determine the solar wind flow regime on board the spacecraft. The book is of interest to all potential users of the data returned by the Genesis mission, to those studying the isotopic and chemical composition of the early solar system whose work will be influenced by the measurements made by Genesis and by all those interested in the design and implementation of space instruments to study space plasmas.

From the reviews:

.."...The book is a very good balance between theory and applications, of analysis and synthesis, keeping always the focus on the comprehension of the physics ruling our planetary system.

In summary, this represents both an excellent textbook for students and a fundamental reference, and encyclopedic summary current knowledge, for researchers in the Solar System field." (Alessandro Rossi, Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, 2005)

Over the last decade we entered a new exploration phase of solar flare physics, equipped with powerful spacecraft such as Yohkoh, SoHO, and TRACE that pro vide us detail-rich and high-resolution images of solar flares in soft X-rays, hard X -rays, and extreme-ultraviolet wavelengths. Moreover, the large-area and high sensitivity detectors on the Compton GRO spacecraft recorded an unprecedented number of high-energy photons from solar flares that surpasses all detected high energy sources taken together from the rest of the universe, for which CGRO was mainly designed to explore. However, morphological descriptions of these beau tiful pictures and statistical catalogs of these huge archives of solar data would not convey us much understanding of the underlying physics, if we would not set out to quantify physical parameters from these data and would not subject these measurements to theoretical models. Historically, there has always been an unsatisfactory gap between traditional astronomy that dutifully describes the mor phology of observations, and the newer approach of astrophysics, which starts with physical concepts from first principles and analyzes astronomical data with the goal to confirm or disprove theoretical models. In this review we attempt to bridge this yawning gap and aim to present the recent developments in solar flare high-energy physics from a physical point of view, structuring the observations and analysis results according to physical processes, such as particle acceleration, propagation, energy loss, kinematics, and radiation signatures.

These are the proceedings of the Symposium 3 of JENAM 2011 on new scientific challenges posed by the Sun. The topics covered are

1. The unusual sunspot minimum, which poses challenges to the solar dynamo theory

2. The Sun's Terra-Hertz emission, which opens a new observational window

3. Corona wave activity

4. Space weather agents - initiation, propagation, and forecasting

In 21 in-depth contributions, the reader will be presented with the latest findings."

Prominences are amazing objects of great beauty whose formation, basic structure and eruption represent one of the basic unsolved problems in Solar Physics. It is now 14 years since the last book on prominences appeared (Tandberg-Hanssen, 1974), during which time much progress in our knowledge of the physics of prominences has been made, and so the time is ripe for a new text book which it is hoped will be a helpful summary of the subject for students, postdocs and solar researchers. Indeed, the last few years has seen an upsurge in interest in prominences due to high resolution ground-and space-based observations and advances in theory. For example, an IAU colloquium was held in Oslo (Jensen et al, 1978), a Solar Maximum Mission Workshop took place at Goddard Space Right Center (poland, 1986), an IAU Colloquium is planned in Yugoslavia in September 1989 in prominences and it is expected that the SOHO satellite will be a further stimulus to prominence research. In November 1987 a Workshop on the Dynamics and Structure of Solar Prominences was held in Palma Mallorca at the invitation of Jose Luis Ballester with the aim of bringing observers and theorists together and having plenty of time for in-depth discussions of the basic physics of promi nences."

This book's interdisciplinary scope aims at bridging various communities: 1) cosmochemists, who study meteoritic samples from our own solar system, 2) (sub-) millimetre astronomers, who measure the distribution of dust and gas of star-forming regions and planet-forming discs, 3) disc modellers, who describe the complex photo-chemical structure of parametric discs to fit these to observation, 4) computational astrophysicists, who attempt to decipher the dynamical structure of magnetised gaseous discs, and the effects the resulting internal structure has on the aerodynamic re-distribution of embedded solids, 5) theoreticians in planet formation theory, who aim to piece it all together eventually arriving at a coherent holistic picture of the architectures of planetary systems discovered by 6) the exoplanet observers, who provide us with unprecedented samples of exoplanet worlds. Combining these diverse fields the book sheds light onto the riddles that research on planet formation is currently confronted with, and paves the way for a comprehensive understanding of the formation, evolution, and dynamics of young solar systems. The chapters 'Chondrules - Ubiquitous Chondritic Solids Tracking the Evolution of the Solar Protoplanetary Disk', 'Dust Coagulation with Porosity Evolution' and 'The Emerging Paradigm of Pebble Accretion' are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

The aim of this Advanced Study Institute was to give an account on the most recent results obtained in solar research. Bucharest was chosen to host it, because the capital city of Romania was located right in the middle of the totality path of the last eclipse of the millennium, on 11th August 1999; furthermore the phenomenon was close to reach there its longest duration: 2m 23s. Such a total eclipse is not only a very spectacular event which draws the crowds: to astronomers, solar eclipses still offer the best conditions for observing the lower part of the corona. The Sun plays a crucial role in our very existence. It was responsible for the formation of the Earth, and rendered this planet fit to host living beings, providing the right amount of heat, and this for a long enough span of time. Quite understandably, it has always been a prime target of human curiosity, and more recently one of scientific investigation. During the last century, it was realized that the Sun is a star like billions of others; we learned since that it draws its energy from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen, and we are now able to estimate its age and life expectancy.

In the past decade, indirect (Doppler) imaging techniques have opened up a whole new discipline in stellar astronomy, providing increasingly detailed photometric, magnetic, and chemical inhomogeneity images of stellar surfaces. Furthermore, new optical interferometers are already being used with sophisticated interferometer techniques to image stellar surface structures more directly, and in the future the ESO VLT Interferometer and other instruments will extend these capabilities enormously. These developments are highlighted in the first two sections of this book. The large number of recent results, ground-based and space-based, and the lack of a generally accepted dynamo theory with predictive power for the stars and the Sun, result in an ever-growing complexity of interpretation of individual results. The IAU Symposium 176 on Stellar Surface Structure' consequently focused on spatially resolved stellar observations throughout the H-R diagram, from O- and B-stars to late M-stars. Two further sections in this book summarize the current observational data on surface inhomogeneities in stellar photospheres, chromospheres, and coronae. Finally, a special section is devoted to next generation model atmospheres.

This monograph is the fIrst book exclusively devoted to Dusty and Dirty from a unifIed Electrohydrodynamical point of view, incorporating new Plasmas concepts of Electric Cusp-Reconnection and Generalized Critical Ionization Velocities, based on a survey stimulated from a series of International Wo- shops/Symposia on Plasmas in Space and in the Laboratory held in Tokyo since 1980, and from associations with a number of Universities and Institutions which offered me opportunities to do specifIc research. For example, the subjects of Mirrors and Cusps, Critical Velocities, Double Layers or Dipoles, and Quadrupoles in this monograph were initiated by the fIrst International Workshop on Relation between Laboratory and Space Plasmas held in Tokyo in 1980 which was well received, in this connection in particular thankfully by the late Professor Hannes Alfven with encouraging communica tions, inspiring me to studies of critical velocities, electrical version offield line merging-reconnection, and Unconventional Plasmas. Although the subject of this monograph was partly included also in topics at the URSI Workshop on Nonlinear and Environmental Electromagnetics in 1984, at the second Wo- shop on Relation between Laboratory and Space Plasmas in 1986, and at the URSI Symposium on Environmental and Space Electromagnetics in 1989, the main subject: Dusty and Dirty Plasmas and EHD (electrohydrodynamics) was discussed exclusively at the later Symposium in 1992, resulting in the fIrst monograph, Dusty and Dirty Plasmas with Noise and Chaos in Space and in the Laboratory in this fIeld for which Professor John E.

The Theory Institute in Solar-Terrestrial Physics was held at Boston College 19-26 August 1982. The program consisted of a two-week School followed by the first theory conference in the field. This book is based upon the lectures presented at the School. Several years ago there was a convergence of efforts to promote the role of theory in space plasma physics. Reports from the National Academy of Sciences and NASA advisory committees documented the disciplinary maturity of solar-terrestrial physics and recommended that theorists play a greater role in the continued development of the field. The so-called theory program in solar-terrestrial physics was established by NASA in 1979 and implemented in accordance with the guidelines set forth by a panel of scientists, primarily theorists, in the field. The same panel motivated the Boston College program. Published proceedings of the school would provide curricular materials for the training of graduate students in solar-terrestrial physics. J.M. Forbes, T.E. Holzer, A.J. Hundhausen, A.D. Richmond, and G.L. Siscoe were the principal architects of the curriculum of the School, and I am grateful for their contributions. Each also lectured at the School. The chapters in this book were prepared by the authors themselves with one exception. The chapters by Parker are edited reproductions of his lectures. Unfortunately, it is our loss that the lectures of Holzer and Hundhausen are not included in the book.

This is volume 5 of Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems, a six-volume compendium of modern astronomical research, covering subjects of key interest to the main fields of contemporary astronomy. This volume on Galactic Structure and Stellar Populations, edited by Gerard F. Gilmore, presents accessible review chapters on Stellar Populations, Chemical Abundances as Population Tracers, Metal-Poor Stars and the Chemical Enrichment of the Universe, The Stellar and Sub-Stellar Initial Mass Function of Simple and Composite Populations, The Galactic Nucleus, The Galactic Bulge, Open Clusters and Their Role in the Galaxy, Star Counts and the Nature of Galactic Thick Disk, The Infrared Galaxy, Interstellar PAHs and Dust, Galactic Neutral Hydrogen, High-Velocity Clouds, Magnetic Fields in Galaxies, Astrophysics of Galactic Charged Cosmic Rays, Gamma-Ray Emission of Supernova Remnants and the Origin of Galactic Cosmic Rays, Galactic Distance Scales, Globular Cluster Dynamical Evolution, Dynamics of Disks and Warps, Mass Distribution and Rotation Curve in the Galaxy, Dark Matter in the GalacticDwarf Spheroidal Satellites, and History of Dark Matter in Galaxies.

All chapters of the handbook were written by practicing professionals. They include sufficient background material and references to the current literature to allow readers to learn enough about a specialty within astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology to get started on their own practical research projects. In the spirit of the series Stars and Stellar Systems published by Chicago University Press in the 1960s and 1970s, each chapter of Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems can stand on its own as a fundamental review of its respective sub-discipline, and each volume can be used as a textbook or recommended reference work for advanced undergraduate or postgraduate courses. Advanced students and professional astronomers in their roles as both lecturers and researchers will welcome Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems as a comprehensive and pedagogical reference work on astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology.

Influenced by astronomy education research, 21st Century Astronomy offers a complete pedagogical and media package that facilitates learning by doing, while the new one-column design makes the Fifth Edition the most accessible introductory text available today.

In the 18th century, purely scientific interests as well as the practical necessities of navigation motivated the development of new theories and techniques to accurately describe celestial and lunar motion.

"Between Theory and Observations" presents a detailed and accurate account, not to be found elsewhere in the literature, of Tobias Mayer's important contributions to the study of lunar motion including the creation of his famous set of lunar tables, which were the most accurate of their time.

This multiauthor book is a compilation of fourteen papers that result from activities within the scientific programme "Response of the Earth System to Impact Processes" (IMPACT) of the European Science Foundation. The program deals with all aspects of meteorite impact research and operates through workshops, exchange programs and short courses. Most of the papers are initiated from the 4th IMPACT workshop "Meteorite Impacts in Precambrian Shields" that took place in Lappajärvi, Finland, in 2000. The volume begins with a detailed view of thirty confirmed meteorite impact structures found in the Fennoscandian Shield and its nearest surroundings. The following papers describe impact structures in different areas.

In summary, we can conclude that the contributions of the different ionization processes to the total ionization rate for the most abundant interstellar species are basically known. The ionization of the noble gases He and Ne is almost completely dominated by photoionization, whereas for H charge-exchange with the solar wind is most important. For other species, such as 0 and Ar, both processes contribute significantly. Electron impact ionization can typically contribute by '" 10% to the total rate in the inner Solar System. Because direct measurements of the solar EUV flux are not yet continuously available, the variation of the ionization rate over the solar cycle still contains a relatively large uncertainty. The recent measurements of pickup ion distributions and of the neutral helium gas provide an independent tool to determine the total ionization rate that can be used to cross calibrate with the results obtained for the individual ionization processes. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to M. Allen for supplying us with new data on photoioniza tion cross-sections compiled by him. We thank also M. Gruntman for drawing our attention to and support in collecting the most recent data on charge-exchange cross-sections. D. R. was supported by grant No. 2 P03C. 004. 09 from the Com mittee for Scientific Research (Poland). This work was also supported in part through NASA contract NAS7-918, NSF Grant INT-911637, NASA Grant NAGW- 2579.

This book contains lectures presented in the symposium on "wave Instabili ties in S: pace Plasmas" organized wi thin the progrem of .t.y . XIX URSI General Assembly held in Helsinki, Finland, during tJ: l

The Symposium 'Meteorite Research' was conceived originally at the second meeting of the UNESCO Working Group on Meteorites, held in Paris October 18-20, 1965, under the chairmanship of Professor J. Orce ' In addition to the Chairman the fol lowing were present: Dr. G. Harbottle, Dr. M. H. Hey, Dr. B. H. Mason, Dr. P. M. Millman, Professor K. I. Sztr6kay. Dr. E. M. Fournier d'Albe represented the UNESCO Secretariat. Recommendation No.4 from the minutes of this meeting reads as follows: "The Working Group, in view ofthe need to strengthen international co-operation in meteorite research, asks that the International Atomic Energy Agency be requested to consider the possibility of organizing, in 1968, an interdisciplinary conference on meteorites, in collaboration with UNESCO and the appropriate international scientific organizations." After approval in principle of this recommendation had been secured from various international agencies and unions, plans for the symposium were consolidated at the third and final meeting of the Working Group, held in Paris October 12-14, 1966, the members in attendance being the same as for the second meeting."