Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Space Science - Astronomy

Composed of a set of lectures and tutorial reviews, this book stems from a summer school devoted to the gravitational aspects of the sun and their geophysical consequences. Contribitions elaborate on the gravitational distortions of the sun which can be used to gain some knowledge of the sun's interior and surface phenomena but which also influences the sun's irradience and thus ultimately the earth's climate. Last but not least, it is shown that these small distortions constitute a formidable challenge to solar astrometry, and the final part of the book describes the observational...

A thorough introduction to the computation of celestial mechanics, covering everything from astronomical and computational theory to the construction of rapid and accurate applications programs. The book supplies the necessary knowledge and software solutions for determining and predicting positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, minor planets and comets, solar eclipses, stellar occultations by the Moon, phases of the Moon and much more. This completely revised edition takes advantage of C++, and individual applications may be efficiently realized through the use of a powerful module library....

After describing cosmic gamma-ray production and absorption, the instrumentation used in gamma-ray astronomy is explained. The main part of the book deals with astronomical results, including the somewhat surprising result that the gamma-ray sky is continuously changing.

For every galaxy in the field or in clusters, there are about three galaxies in groups. The Milky Way itself resides in a group, and groups can be found at high redshift. The current generation of 10-m class telescopes and space facilities allows the observation of the members of nearby groups with exquisite detail, and their properties can be correlated with the global properties of their host group. Groups in the local Universe offer us the chance to study galaxies in environments characterized by strong interactions. In the cosmological context, groups trace large-scale structures...

The study of the Solar system, particularly of its newly discovered outer parts, is one of the hottest topics in modern astrophysics with great potential for revealing fundamental clues about the origin of planets and even the emergence of life. The three lecturers of the 35th Saas-Fee Advanced Course, which have been updated and collected in this volume, cover the field from observational, theoretical and numerical perspectives.

This book provides the reader with an insight into the science and technology of interstellar spaceflight. It also examines for the first time how it may be possible to exploit the Sun as a gravitational lens for the purposes of interstellar exploration.