Related papers: Eclipses in Australian Aboriginal Astronomy
The Nabateans built several monuments in Petra and elsewhere displaying a decoration with a preference for astronomical motifs, possibly as a reflection of their religion. However, due to the lack of direct written accounts and the scarcity…
The circumplanetary environments in our Solar System host a stunning array of moon and ring systems. Study of these environs has yielded valuable insights into planetary system formation and evolution, and there is every reason to believe…
A time-dependent gravitational constant or mass would correctly describe the suspected increasing of both: the Astronomical unit and the eccentricity of the Lunar orbit around the Earth.
Solar system, exoplanet and stellar science rely on transits, eclipses and occultations for dynamical and physical insight. Often, the geometry of these configurations are modelled by assuming a particular viewpoint. Here, instead, I derive…
Solar flares and CMEs have a broad range of magnitudes. This review discusses the possibility of "extreme events," defined as those with magnitudes greater than have been seen in the existing historical record. For most quantitative…
Transiting extrasolar planets provide an opportunity to study the mass-radius relation of planets as well as their internal structure. The existence of a secondary eclipse enables further study of the thermal properties of the the planet by…
We trace the evolution of research on extreme solar and solar-terrestrial events from the 1859 Carrington event to the rapid development of the last twenty years. Our focus is on the largest observed/inferred/theoretical cases of sunspot…
Ethnographic evidence indicates that bora (initiation) ceremonial sites in southeast Australia, which typically comprise a pair of circles connected by a pathway, are symbolically reflected in the Milky Way as the 'Sky Bora'. This evidence…
This article advances the hypothesis that the heightened eschatological sensitivity evident among the historians writing in the 5th century and its weaker echos in the time of Charlemagne were caused by the irregularities of the the…
The mysterious lines in the desert of Nazca in southern Peru received many attempts at an explanation. We discuss the possibility that their origin is based on solar eclipses which could have evoked some kind of "reaction" by the…
The Solar System motivates students to interest themselves in sciences, as a large number of concepts may be easily introduced through the observation and understanding of planet's motion. Using a large representation of the Solar System at…
Space weather refers to dynamic conditions on the Sun and in the space environment of the Earth, which are often driven by solar eruptions and their subsequent interplanetary disturbances. It has been unclear how an extreme space weather…
The logic of abduction involves a collision between deduction and induction, where empirical surprises violate expectations and scientists innovate to resolve them. Here we reformulate abduction as a social process, occurring not only…
The classical three-body problem arose in an attempt to understand the effect of the Sun on the Moon's Keplerian orbit around the Earth. It has attracted the attention of some of the best physicists and mathematicians and led to the…
The expected distributions of eclipse-depth versus period for eclipsing binaries of different luminosities are derived from large-scale population synthesis experiments. Using the rapid Hurley et al. BSE binary evolution code, we have…
In a recent paper, we applied time series analysis methods to study the possible influence of the solar motion through the Galaxy on terrestrial extinction (Feng & Bailer-Jones 2013). We drew conclusions about the relative probabilities of…
This chapter introduces flood and drought through the understanding of the water cycle. In addition to the water cycle, we consider the energy cycle. The floods and droughts have strong regional and seasonal characteristics. The causes of…
An ancient Egyptian Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days, the Cairo Calendar (CC), assigns luck with the period of 2.850 days. Previous astronomical, astrophysical and statistical analyses of CC support the idea that this was the period of…
This thesis assesses the influence of astronomical phenomena on the Earth's biosphere and climate. I examine in particular the relevance of both the path of the Sun through the Galaxy and the evolution of the Earth's orbital parameters in…
The highest priority recommendation of the Astro2020 Decadal Survey for space-based astronomy was the construction of an observatory capable of characterizing habitable worlds. In this paper series we explore the detectability of and…