Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Space Science - Astronomy

This thesis presents accurate analyses of the spin-orbit angle for many remarkable transiting exoplanetary systems, including the first measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for a multiple transiting system.

The author presents the observational methods needed to probe the spin-orbit angle, the relation between the stellar spin axis and planetary orbital axis. Measurements of the spin-orbit angle provide us a unique and valuable opportunity to understand the origin of close-in giant exoplanets, called "hot Jupiters."

The first method introduced involves...

Enigmatic for many years, cosmic rays are now known to be not rays at all, but particles, the nuclei of atoms, raining down continually on the earth, where they can be detected throughout the atmosphere and sometimes even thousands of feet underground. This book tells the long-running detective story behind the discovery and study of cosmic rays, a story that stretches from the early days of subatomic particle physics in the 1890s to the frontiers of high-energy astrophysics today.

Writing for the amateur scientist and the educated general reader, Michael Friedlander, a...

Space Commerce relates the story of private enterprise's unsteady rise to prominence as a major influence on world space policy and research. The first space race proved the technological and military prowess of the two superpowers; but since the 1970s that contest has been supplanted by a multinational struggle to command the commercial opportunities of space.

The commercial space age was born in 1965 when Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite, went into orbit. With characteristic ingenuity, American industrialists began to dream of garnering...

In September 2011, the GRAIL mission launched two unmanned spacecraft to the Moon, which entered into lunar orbit on December 31, 2011 and January 1, 2012. They orbited the Moon until December 17, 2012, when they impacted the surface near the Moon's north pole. This book contains three review articles co-authored by the GRAIL Science Team and Guest Scientists that describe the reasons for the GRAIL mission, the development of the necessary technology, and the design of the mission to acquire the most precise measurements of the lunar gravity field possible today. The book provides a...