Related papers: Eclipses in Australian Aboriginal Astronomy
Implications of the recently discovered systematic abundance difference between the Sun and two collections of `solar twins' are discussed. The differences can be understood as an imprint on the abundances of the solar convection zone…
The Sun is forced into an orbit around the barycenter of the solar system because of the changing mass distribution of the planets. Solar-planetary-lunar dynamic relationships may form a new basis for understanding and predicting cyclic…
Bayesian nonparametric estimates of Australian mental health distributions are obtained to assess how the mental health status of the population has changed over time and to compare the mental health status of female/male and…
The fields of occultation and microlensing are linked historically. Early this century, occultation of the Sun by the Moon allowed the apparent positions of background stars projected near the limb of the Sun to be measured and compared…
Glaciations were attributed to variations of the Earths orbit (Milankovitch cycles). But the best ever dated paleoclimatic record (from a speleothem from Devils Hole, Nevada) demonstrated that the end of the last glacial period (termination…
Some examples of the events associated with falls of rocks and iron terrestrial origin from the sky are considered (in scientific publications they are often called as meteor-wrongs or pseudo-meteorites). Their possible connections with…
The number of planets in the solar system over the last three centuries has, perhaps surprisingly, been less of a fixed value than one would think it should be. In this paper, we look at the specific case of Vulcan, which was both a planet…
The detection of exoplanets and accretion disks around newborn stars has spawned new ideas and models of how our Solar System formed and evolved. Meteorites as probes of geologic deep time can provide ground truth to these models. In…
The orbit eccentricities of the Solar System planets are unusually low compared to the average of known exoplanetary systems. A power law correlation has previously been found between the multiplicity of a planetary system and the orbital…
Astronomy is at a turning point in its history and in its relations with the Indigenous peoples who are the generational stewards of land where several of our main observatories are located. The controversy regarding the further development…
Transiting exoplanets provide access to data to study the mass-radius relation and internal structure of extrasolar planets. Long-period transiting planets allow insight into planetary environments similar to the Solar System where, in…
Mapping exoplanets across phases and during secondary eclipse is a powerful technique for characterizing Hot Jupiters in emission. Since these planets are expected to rotate about axes normal to their orbital planes, with rotation periods…
With the same general purposes as Part I of this monograph, we analyze here major events in the history of the Earth, such as the formation of the Earth itself, the origin of life, the great glaciations and the mass extinctions of species,…
The similarity of Mercury to the Moon raises the question on mercurian analogues of lunar transient phenomena. However, since the mid-1960s, this topic has remained out of attention. Nevertheless, the discoveries of the 21st century and the…
A nearby supernova (SN) explosion could have negatively influenced life on Earth, maybe even been responsible for mass extinctions. Mass extinction poses a significant extinction of numerous species on Earth, as recorded in the…
This paper studies the effects of dynamical interactions among the planets in observed extrasolar planetary systems, including hypothetical additional bodies, with a focus on secular perturbations. These interactions cause the…
This paper describes some of the astronomical effects that could be important for understanding the ice ages, historic climate changes and the recent temperature increase. These include changes in the sun's luminosity, periodic changes in…
Doppler spectroscopy has detected 136 planets around nearby stars. A major puzzle is why their orbits are highly eccentric, while all planets in our Solar System are on nearly circular orbits, as expected if they formed by accretion…
Over the past several decades, thousands of planets have been discovered outside of our Solar System. These planets exhibit enormous diversity, and their large numbers provide a statistical opportunity to place our Solar System within the…
Dark energy is an elusive concept, which has been introduced two decades ago in order to make the acceleration of the universe a comprehensible phenomenon. However, the nature of this energy is far from being understood, both from a…