At the beginning of the 20th century, Kristian Birkeland (1867-1917), a Norwegian scientist of insatiable curiosity, addressed questions that had vexed European scientists for centuries. Why do the northern lights appear overhead when the earth s magnetic field is disturbed? How are magnetic storms connected to disturbances on the sun? To answer these questions Birkeland interpreted his advance laboratory simulations and daring campaigns in the Arctic wilderness in the light of Maxwell s newly discovered laws of electricity and magnetism. Birkeland s ideas were dismissed for decades, only...
At the beginning of the 20th century, Kristian Birkeland (1867-1917), a Norwegian scientist of insatiable curiosity, addressed questions that had v...
Theideatocelebrate50yearsoftheSalpeterIMFoccurredduringtherecent IAU General Assembly in Sydney, Australia. Indeed, it was from Australia that in July 1954 Ed Salpeter submitted his famous paper "The Luminosity Function and Stellar Evolution" with the rst derivation of the empirical stellar IMF. This contribution was to become one of the most famous astrophysics papers of the last 50 years. Here, Ed Salpeter introduced the terms "original mass function" and "original luminosity function," and estimated the pro- bility for the creation of stars of given mass at a particular time, now known as...
Theideatocelebrate50yearsoftheSalpeterIMFoccurredduringtherecent IAU General Assembly in Sydney, Australia. Indeed, it was from Australia that in July...
Comets are small bodies, but of great cosmic relevance. Given its pristine nature, they may preserve valuable and unique information on thechemical and physical processes that took place in theearly solar system, and that may be occurring in the formation of other planetary systems. They might have even played a very important role in the origin of life on Earth. Beyond that, since ancient times comets have inspired awe, superstition, and also curiosity anddebate. Their sudden apparitions challenged the long-held view of the immutability of the heavens, which triggered a long debate on...
Comets are small bodies, but of great cosmic relevance. Given its pristine nature, they may preserve valuable and unique information on thechemical an...
When I wasa child, growing up in South America, I often went camping in the wild and hence had direct access to the wondrous Southern sky; the Southern Cross was all mine at the time. Little did I know then that the study of the sky would take such a huge importance in my life, and that in the end astronomy and astrophysics would in many ways become my country and my religion. I have lived in several di?erent countries, and when asked my nationality, I am always very tempted to reply: astronomer. I started as a theorist, and my only dream in my youth was to spend nights thinking and...
When I wasa child, growing up in South America, I often went camping in the wild and hence had direct access to the wondrous Southern sky; the Souther...
Thepublication oftheHipparcos andTycho Catalogues in 1997 transformed astrometry, and as a consequence astronomers perception of astrometry. What had before often been regarded as a somewhat quaint specialty of limited re- vance to modern astrophysics, was suddenly seen to produce a wealth of data of immediate practical use. The ready availability of many thousand precise trigonometric stellar distances and the access to an accurate and dense - tical reference frame have changed the way astronomers think about certain problems and plan their experiments. Inevitably, the exploitation of so...
Thepublication oftheHipparcos andTycho Catalogues in 1997 transformed astrometry, and as a consequence astronomers perception of astrometry. What had ...
Here is a fascinating text that integrates topics pertaining to all scales of the MHD-waves, emphasizing the linkages between the ULF-waves below the ionosphere on the ground and magnetospheric MHD-waves. It will be most helpful to graduate and post-graduate students, familiar with advanced calculus, who study the science of MHD-waves in the magnetosphere and ionosphere. The book deals with Ultra-Low-Frequency (ULF)-electromagnetic waves observed on the Earth and in Space.
Here is a fascinating text that integrates topics pertaining to all scales of the MHD-waves, emphasizing the linkages between the ULF-waves below t...
The subject of this volume in the Astrophysics and Space Science Library is Electro- magnetic Radiation in Space. It is essentially based on the lectures given at the third ESRO Summer School which was held from 19 July to 13 August, 1965, in Alpbach, Austria. Fifty-eight selected students attended the courses representing the following countries: Austria (2), Belgium (1), Denmark (1), France (12), Germany (10), Italy (7), Netherlands (2), Spain (4), Sweden (6), Switzerland (3), United Kingdom (9), United States (1). Thirteen lectures courses and nine seminars were given by sixteen different...
The subject of this volume in the Astrophysics and Space Science Library is Electro- magnetic Radiation in Space. It is essentially based on the lectu...
On March 28 and 29, 1969, at the occasion of the dedication of the European Southern Observatory, some 90 astronomers from all over the world gathered at the ESO headquarters at Santiago de Chile for discussing problems of the Magellanic Clouds. They came from Argentina, Australia, Chile, Mexico, South Mrica and the United States as well as from Europe; these latter, naturally, mostly from the member states ofESO. The choice of the subject was an obvious one. When erecting the European Southern Observatory as a joint effort in European astronomy, it was agreed from the beginning that the...
On March 28 and 29, 1969, at the occasion of the dedication of the European Southern Observatory, some 90 astronomers from all over the world gathered...
It was about fourteen years ago that some of us became intrigued with the idea of searching the sky for X-ray and gamma-ray sources other than the Sun, the only celestial emitter of high-energy photons known at that time. It was, of course, clear that an effort in this direction would not have been successful unless there occurred, somewhere in space, processes capable of producing high-energy photons much more efficiently than the processes responsible for the radiative emission of the Sun or of ordinary stars. The possible existence of such processes became the subject of much study and...
It was about fourteen years ago that some of us became intrigued with the idea of searching the sky for X-ray and gamma-ray sources other than the Sun...
