The millimetre and submillimetre spectral region (300 to 3000 Ilm or 1000 to 100 GHz) was until recently one of the few spectral regimes not fully opened up for astronomical studies. Thanks both to improvements in detectors and receivers and to the construction of large telescopes at high altitude sites this situation is improving very rapidly. Three major telescopes have been built recently and are coming into operation during 1987 and 1988, namely the 15m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and the lOAm Caltech Submillimetre Observatory (CSO) telescope, both located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and the 15 m Swedish -ESO telescope (SEST) in Chile. Because a very wide range of astronomical problems can be tackled with these major new facilities there is a great deal of interest from the many potential new users anxious to become familiar with this rapidly developing field. During 1986 it became clear to British and Dutch astronomers involved in planning the commissioning and operation of the JCMT, that a summer school in this field would greatly benefit the potential and actual JCMT user community. With financial support from the SERC and supplemented by a grant from the ZWO, the Summer School on 'Millimetre and Submillimetre Astronomy' was held at Stirling University from June 21 to 27, 1987.

What are the mysterious numbers that unlock the secrets of the universe? In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star Antonio Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of nine of the most extraordinary numbers in physics. These include Graham's number, which is so large that if you thought about it in the wrong way, your head would collapse into a singularity; TREE(3), whose finite value could never be reached before the universe reset itself; and 10^{-120}, which measures the desperately unlikely balance of energy the universe needs to exist. . . Leading us down the rabbit hole to the inner workings of reality, Padilla demonstrates how these unusual numbers are the key to unlocking such mind-bending phenomena as black holes, entropy and the problem of the cosmological constant, which shows that our two best ways of understanding the universe contradict one another. Combining cutting-edge science with an entertaining cosmic quest, Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them is an electrifying, head-twisting guide to the most fundamental truths of the universe.

Since the publication of The New Science of Astrobiology in the year 2001 the first edition of the present book two significant events have taken place raising the subject from the beginning of the present century to its present maturity. Firstly, in 2001 the Galileo Mission still had two years to complete its task, which turned out to be an outstanding survey of the Jovian system, especially of its intriguing satellite Europa. Secondly, the Cassini Huygens Mission was still on its way to Saturn. Its present success has surpassed all expectations of ESA and NASA. Astrobiologists still did not know that Titan was the fifth body in the Solar System that possibly contained a water ocean (including the Earth and the three Galilean satellites other than Io). For these reasons the book includes overviews of the evolutionary and molecular biology that are necessary. There is a discussion of other sectors of culture that are the natural frontiers of astrobiology, especially the humanities."

For many astronomers, Adaptive Optics is something like a dream coming true. Sinee 1609 and the first observations of celestial bodies performed with the help of an optieal teleseope, astronomers have always fighted to improve the 'resolving power' of their instruments. For a long time, engineers have trimmed the optieal quality of the teleseopes, until they finally reaehed the barrier set by the atmospherie turbulence, a few seconds of are. At that point, the intrinsic quality of the site beeame a major issue to establish new observatories with modern telescopes, and astronomers started to desert the urban skies and to migrate toward mountains and deserts. This quest has been sueeessful and a few privileged sites, where the average natural 'seeing' is close to 0. 5," are now hosting clusters of giant telescopes of the 4 m and soon 10 m class. Yet, this atmospherie limit corresponds in the visible wavelength range to the diffraetion limit of a 20 em telescope only. The loss was severe: a faetor 20 in angular and several hundred in peak energy eoncentration, i. e. in deteetivity of resolution very faint objeets. In the beginning of the seventies, two doors half opened to provide a way out of this dead-end. First, the technique of speckle interferometry (and its various related developments) has allowed to restore the diffraetion limit of large telescopes at visible and infrared wavelengths (see, e. g.

This book summarizes the gathering of information on and the growing understanding of M33 from the 1920s, when Hubble first determined its true nature, to the 21st century, when the Hubble Telescope probed deeply into its many secrets. With its regular symmetrical spiral structure, and its being not tilted too much and near enough to allow detailed studies of its stars, M33 is well-suited for the study of a typical spiral galaxy. In this work, Paul Hodge places current research on M33 (and similar galaxies) in both historical and global perspectives. The book is written in a language accessible for specialists and non-specialists, for professional and amateur astronomers, for scientists and the curious public and, most importantly, for students.

This volume provides an overview of the field of Astrostatistics understood as the sub-discipline dedicated to the statistical analysis of astronomical data. It presents examples of the application of the various methodologies now available to current open issues in astronomical research. The technical aspects related to the scientific analysis of the upcoming petabyte-scale databases are emphasized given the importance that scalable Knowledge Discovery techniques will have for the full exploitation of these databases. Based on the 2011 Astrostatistics and Data Mining in Large Astronomical Databases conference and school, this volume gathers examples of the work by leading authors in the areas of Astrophysics and Statistics, including a significant contribution from the various teams that prepared for the processing and analysis of the Gaia data.

Astrometry is on the threshold of great changes due to the fact that this decade, alone, is witnessing an improvement of stellar positions equivalent to the total improvement of the previous two centuries. The Hipparcos Satellite has concluded its observations, and the catalog is in preparation. Preliminary results assure that the Hipparcos catalog will provide positions, parallaxes and annual proper motions for over 100,000 stars with accuracies of 1.5 milliarcseconds. In addition, the Tycho catalog will provide positions of about 30 milliarcseconds accuracy for over 1 million stars, and annual proper motions with 3 milliarcsecond accuracy will subsequently be ob tained by means of first epoch positions from the Astrographic Catalog. Optical interferometers on the ground are beginning operation, and these instruments can provide observational accuracies of approximately one milliarcsecond. Also, the traditional reference frame based on the Fun damental Catalog of bright stars is being replaced by the extragalactic ref erence frame, based on radio sources with accuracies of one milliarcsecond. Thus, astrometry will change from a fundamental reference frame defined in terms of the dynamical reference frame of the solar system with accuracies of 100 milliarcseconds to a space-fixed, extragalactic reference frame with accuracies of one milliarcsecond. Future astrometric observations should be in the 1 -100 milliarcsecond accuracy range. There are a number of concepts for future astrometric instruments in space. Most of these can provide sub-milliarcsecond astrometric accuracies."

This volume contains the updated and expanded lecture notes of the 37th Saas-Fee Advanced Course organised by the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy. It offers the most comprehensive and up to date review of one of the hottest research topics in astrophysics - how our Milky Way galaxy formed. Joss Bland-Hawthorn & Ken Freeman lectured on Near Field Cosmology - The Origin of the Galaxy and the Local Group. Francesca Matteucci's chapter is on Chemical evolution of the Milky Way and its Satellites. As designed by the SSAA, books in this series - and this one too - are targeted at graduate and PhD students and young researchers in astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology. Lecturers and researchers entering the field will also benefit from the book.

This is the latest effort in a sequence of presentations begun in 1949 with a series of lectures on long-focus photographic astrometry given by the author as Fulbright professor in Paris at the invitation by the late H. Mineur, at that time Director of the Institut d' Astrophysique. These earlier lectures were published as a series of review articles in Popular Astronomy (1951) and appeared both as Contributions de l'Institut d'Astrophysique, Serie A, No. 81 and as reprint No. 75 of Sproul Observatory. A more elaborate presenta tion was given in 1963 in Stars and Stellar Systems, which was followed by Principles of Astrometry (1967, W. H. Freeman & Co.). During the second half of 1974, again under Fulbright auspices, at the invitation of Pik Sin The, I lectured at the Astronomical Institute in Amster dam, followed by a short course in May-June 1978 at the invitation of E. P. J. van den Heuvel. I gave a more extensive course at the Institut d' As trophysique at the invitation of J. C. Pecker of the College de France and of J. Audouze, Director of the LA.P. Both in Amsterdam and in Paris I had presented occasional astrometric topics at various times. The opportunity to lecture in France and in Holland has facilitated, influenced and improved the organization and contents of the presentations on the subject of long-focus photographic astrometry."

th The 4 ESO CCO Workshop, Optical Detectors for Astronomy, was held during September 13-16, 1999 at its usual location, the headquarters of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany. We prefer to remember this workshop as a "meeting of friends," who came to Garching to visit ESO and to present their work, rather than a formal meeting. Based on our experience with the 1996 ESO CCO workshop, we deliberately put emphasis on creating an environment that encouraged the participants to stay together and informally exchange ideas. These informal events began with a tour of the BWM auto factory and continued with a reception at "SchloB Beletic," the conference dinner at a real SchloB of the Bavarian International School (where the participants enjoyed basket, baseball, table soccer, rock climbing and eventually dancing) and concluded with a tour of the Paulaner Brewery and dinner at the Seehaus in the Englisher Garten. The lunch "Biergarten," adjacent to the poster session area, was a daily meeting point. The result was a good mixture of excellent presentations and posters, collected in these Proceedings, and many occasions for people to get in touch and to have fun together, as witnessed by the selection of workshop pictures that we randomly placed between papers. This book contains a special contribution.

Many new tests of gravity and, in particular, of Einstein's general relativity theory will be carried out in the near future: The Lense--Thirring effect and the equivalence principle will be tested in space; moreover, gravitational waves will be detected, and new atomic interferometers and clocks will be built for measurements in gravitational and inertial fields. New high-precision devices have made these experiments feasible. They will contribute to a better understanding of gravitational physics. Both experimental developments and the theoretical concepts are collected in this volume. Exhaustive reviews give an overall insight into the subject of experimental gravitation.

The Finnish mathematician and astronomer Anders Johan Lexell (1740-1784) was a long-time close collaborator as well as the academic successor of Leonhard Euler at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. Lexell was initially invited by Euler from his native town of Abo (Turku) in Finland to Saint Petersburg to assist in the mathematical processing of the astronomical data of the forthcoming transit of Venus of 1769. A few years later he became an ordinary member of the Academy. This is the first-ever full-length biography devoted to Lexell and his prolific scientific output. His rich correspondence especially from his grand tour to Germany, France and England reveals him as a lucid observer of the intellectual landscape of enlightened Europe. In the skies, a comet, a minor planet and a crater on the Moon named after Lexell also perpetuate his memory.

Completely revised and updated, this new edition provides a readable, beautifully illustrated journey through world cultures and the vibrant array of sky mythology, creation stories, models of the universe, temples and skyscrapers that each culture has created to celebrate and respond to the power of the night sky. Sections on the archaeoastronomy of South Asia and South East Asia have been expanded, with original photography and new research on temple alignments in Southern India, and new material describing the astronomical practices of Indonesia, Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries. Beautiful photographs of temples in India and Asia have been added, as well as new diagrams explaining the alignment of these structures and the astronomical underpinnings of temples within the Pallava and Chola cultures. From new fieldwork in the Four Corners region of North America, Dr. Penprase has included accounts of Pueblo skywatching and photographs of ceremonial kivas that help elucidate the rich astronomical knowledge of the Pueblo people. The popular "Archaeoastronomy of Skyscrapers" section of the book has been updated as well, with new interpretations of skyscrapers in Indonesia, Taiwan and China.With the rapid pace of discovery in astronomy and astrophysics, entirely new perspectives are emerging about dark matter, inflation and the future of the universe. The Power of Stars puts these discoveries in context and describes how they fit into the modern perspective of cosmology, which has arisen from the universal human response to the sky that has inspired both ancient and modern cultures.

This book includes nine chapters written by internationally recognized experts, covering all aspects of millisecond pulsars in one concise and cohesive volume. These aspects include pulsations powered by stellar spin, accretion and thermonuclear burning of accreted matter, their physics and utility, stellar evolution and the extreme physics of super-dense stellar cores. The book includes substantial background material as well as recent theoretical and multi-wavelength observational results. The volume will thus be useful for professional astronomers and graduate students alike. What is the behavior of the strong nuclear interaction, and what are the matter constituents at ultrahigh densities in neutron star cores? How do old neutron stars in binaries evolve? How does their magnetosphere interact with the surrounding plasma to accelerate particles and emit radiation observed at all wavelengths? These are just a few of the questions that millisecond pulsars are helping us answer and will settle in the near future with the next generation of instruments. Such quickly rotating, highly magnetized neutron stars are remarkable natural laboratories that allow us to investigate the fundamental constituents of matter and their interactions under extreme conditions that cannot be reproduced in terrestrial laboratories.

Our understanding of galaxy formation comes mostly from two sources: sensitive observations at high angular resolution of the high-redshift Universe, where galaxies are observed to be forming, and detailed observations of individual stars and clouds in the Local Group, where telltale remnants from its formative time remain and similar processes operate at a low level today. The current conference focusses on key aspects of the Local Group, composed of the Milky Way, Andromeda and Triangulum Spiral Galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies, numerous dwarf and irregular galaxies, and intergalactic gas. Topics include the halo and thick disk of the Milky Way with its first stars and stellar streams; the Milky Way bar, bulge and outer edge; interstellar dust and turbulence; star formation processes and stellar scattering in spiral arms; views through the infrared Eyes of the Spitzer Space Telescope; globular clusters; the Local Gould Belt; stellar metallicities and elemental abundances; the environment and black hole in the Milky Way nucleus; orbits of the Magellanic Clouds and galaxy dwarfs; interstellar dust and turbulence; the outer disks and halos of the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies; ripples from a collision in Andromeda; and arcs of carbon stars in the Triangulum and intergalactic clouds. This volume also discusses surveys of planetary nebulae, galaxy morphology at low and high redshift, cosmic evolution of star and galaxy formation and gas accretion, Lyman alpha emitting galaxies, ultra-low surface brightness imaging, and more. Readers are given a clear and comprehensive view of this wide range of topics written by specialists in each field. This is the proceedings of an International Conference at the Seychelles archipelago in May 2014, on the occasion of the 60th birthday of David Block and the millionth (base two) birthday of Bruce Elmegreen.

Free yourself from cosmological tyranny! Everything started in a Big Bang? Invisible dark matter? Black holes? Why accept such a weird cosmos? For all those who wonder about this bizarre universe, and those who want to overthrow the Big Bang, this handbook gives you 'just the facts': the observations that have shaped these ideas and theories. While the Big Bang holds the attention of scientists, it isn't perfect. The authors pull back the curtains, and show how cosmology really works. With this, you will know your enemy, cosmic revolutionary - arm yourself for the scientific arena where ideas must fight for survival! This uniquely-framed tour of modern cosmology gives a deeper understanding of the inner workings of this fascinating field. The portrait painted is realistic and raw, not idealized and airbrushed - it is science in all its messy detail, which doesn't pretend to have all the answers.

The 1990s are proving to be a very exciting p&iod for high angular resolution astronomy. At radio wavelengths a combination of new array instruments and pow erful imaging algorithms have generated images of unprecedented resolution and quality. In the optical and infrared, the great technical difficulties associated with constructing separated-aperture interferometers have been largely overcome, and many new instruments are now operating or are being developed. As these pro grams start to produce observational results they will be able to draw extensively on the experience gained by the radio-interferometry community. Thus it seemed that the time was ripe for a meeting which would bring together workers from all wavelength ranges to discuss the details of the science and art of "Very High Angular Resolution Imaging" . While the main emphasis of Symposium No. 158 was on high resolution tech niques from the radio, mm-wave, infrared and optical bands, it also provided an opportunity for presentation of astronomical results from these techniques. As well as giving our colleagues from the Northern Hemisphere a break from midwinter, the location of the Symposium in Australia recognised the continuing development of astronomical interferometry in this country, especially the recent completion of the Australia Telescope radio array, and the progress toward com missioning of the Sydney University Stellar Interferometer. A number of the par ticipants visited these instruments during the post-symposium tour."

Much has been said and written about the abilities of modern instrumentation to help solve problems of combustion in engines. In the main, however, the design and fabr ication of combustion chambers continues to be based on extrapolation of exper ience gained from use and rig tests, with little input from advanced techniques such as those based on optical diagnotics. At the same time, it has become increasingly difficult to design better combustion chambers without knowledge of the relevant flow processes. Thus, the future must involve improved understanding which, in turn, will require detailed measurements of velocity, temperature and concentration. The need to narrow the gap between current industrial practice and the acquisition and implementation of improved techniques motivated the organization of the Advanced Study Institute upon which this volume is based. This Institute on Instrumentation for Combustion and Flow in Engines was arranged to display the needs of industry and the possibilities made available by modern instrumentation and, at the same time, to make clear the relative advantages of optical and probe techniques. Held at Vimeiro during the period from 13 to 26 September, 1987, the Institute was attended by 120 participants and 16 invited lecturers.

This Festschrift dedicated to the 60th birth anniversary of Prof. Sandip K. Chakrabarti, a well-known Indian astrophysicist, presents a collection of contributions by about fifty scientists who work on diverse topics in contemporary astrophysics and space science including new and low-cost balloon borne experiments, planetary science, astrochemistry and the origin of life, ionospheric research and earthquake predictions, relativistic astrophysics around black holes, and finally, the observational signatures and radiative properties of compact objects. All the authors are well known scholars in their respective subject and are all PhD students of Prof. Sandip K. Chakrabarti. The book demonstrates a two-dimensional evolution of research areas triggered by Sandip Chakrabarti over the past few decades. The first dimension represents the evolution and diversification of Chakrabarti's own research in which new students were trained. A second dimension arises from the evolution of the research topics pursued by Chakrabarti's fifty odd doctoral students, many of whom have become renowned scientists in their own right, after starting with a certain subject under Chakrabarti and then migrating to completely new subjects with dexterity. The editors have compiled and edited the articles appropriately to some extent to suit the spirit of this Festschrift on the one hand and to keep balance in diverse topics on the other. Thus this volume also provides an overview for whosoever wishes to enter the important subjects of compact objects, astrochemistry, ionospheric science or space exploration in near space. New graduates, PhD scholars, teachers and researchers will benefit from this volume. Moreover it is a record of tremendous success of a school in a range of vast topics.

The Workshop "Optical Detectors for Astronomy" was held during October 8-10, 1996 at the headquarters of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany. This was the third meeting of its kind, previous meetings being held in 1991 and 1993, but this is the first ESO "CCD Workshop" that has published proceedings. Most of the leading manufacturers and major astronomical observatories were represented, with the 117 attendees coming together from 14 different countries that spanned every continent on Earth. The motivation for the ESO CCD Workshop series is the creation of informal and open venue of information exchange about astronomical CCD detectors and systems. Judging from the reaction and feedback of the participants, the 1996 workshop was as successful as the previous editions, which is a credit to all who attended. The Workshop was organized as a mixture of invited talks, oral presentations, poster sessions and roundtable discussions, the latter used to foster a free exchange of ideas among participants. These technical sessions were complemented by an opening reception and a congenial evening in downtown Munich, which included a walking tour of the historic area followed by dinner at the famous Franziskaner brewery and an after dinner talk by Walter Kosonocky, who reviewed the history of CCD technology.

The publication of this book is extremely timely, for the next major advances in manned space flight after Project Apollo will most likely be made in earth orbital operations. Manned exploration of the moon will certainly continue after the initial landing, but it will be performed essentially with the Saturn V launch vehicles and Apollo spacecraft developed in Apollo, especially in the early phases. Modifications to this basic hardware will increase operating capabilities to permit extensive lunar explo ration during prolonged stay times by the astronauts on the moon's surface. Manned orbital space stations have been studied for years, and NASA is already well along in development of its first attempt to provide more spacious accommo dations for astronaut-scientists in its Saturn Workshop program. While the Workshop is certainly not the ultimate space station of which our technology is capable, it is a workable, poor man's approach to the immediate need for using and expanding our present manned space flight capability without a de trimentalloss of momentum. The approach of converting a Saturn rocket stage into a manned laboratory and observatory in space is an improvisation that matches the use of the jerry-built Jupiter C back in 1958 to launch Explorer I. Let's hope that it can get the job done just as effectively.

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 book presents experiments which will teach physics relevant to astronomy. The astronomer, as instructor, frequently faces this need when his college or university has no astronomy department and any astronomy course is taught in the physics department. The physicist, as instructor, will find this intellectually appealing when faced with teaching an introductory astronomy course. From these experiments, the student will acquire important analytical tools, learn physics appropriate to astronomy, and experience instrument calibration and the direct gathering and analysis of data. Experiments that can be performed in one laboratory session as well as semester-long observation projects are included.

This book provides a completely revised and expanded version of the previous classic edition 'General Relativity and Relativistic Astrophysics'. In Part I the foundations of general relativity are thoroughly developed, while Part II is devoted to tests of general relativity and many of its applications. Binary pulsars - our best laboratories for general relativity - are studied in considerable detail. An introduction to gravitational lensing theory is included as well, so as to make the current literature on the subject accessible to readers. Considerable attention is devoted to the study of compact objects, especially to black holes. This includes a detailed derivation of the Kerr solution, Israel's proof of his uniqueness theorem, and a derivation of the basic laws of black hole physics. Part II ends with Witten's proof of the positive energy theorem, which is presented in detail, together with the required tools on spin structures and spinor analysis. In Part III, all of the differential geometric tools required are developed in detail. A great deal of effort went into refining and improving the text for the new edition. New material has been added, including a chapter on cosmology. The book addresses undergraduate and graduate students in physics, astrophysics and mathematics. It utilizes a very well structured approach, which should help it continue to be a standard work for a modern treatment of gravitational physics. The clear presentation of differential geometry also makes it useful for work on string theory and other fields of physics, classical as well as quantum.

Based on a Simons Symposium held in 2018, the proceedings in this volume focus on the theoretical, numerical, and observational quest for dark matter in the universe. Present ground-based and satellite searches have so far severely constrained the long-proposed theoretical models for dark matter. Nevertheless, there is continuously growing astrophysical and cosmological evidence for its existence. To address present and future developments in the field, novel ideas, theories, and approaches are called for. The symposium gathered together a new generation of experts pursuing innovative, more complex theories of dark matter than previously considered.This is being done hand in hand with experts in numerical astrophysical simulations and observational techniques-all paramount for deciphering the nature of dark matter. The proceedings volume provides coverage of the most advanced stage of understanding dark matter in various new frameworks. The collection will be useful for graduate students, postdocs, and investigators interested in cutting-edge research on one of the biggest mysteries of our universe.