Related papers: Variable stars magnitudes estimations exploiting t…
Adaptive optics is a technique mostly used on large telescopes. It turns out to be challenging for smaller telescopes (0.5~2m) due to the small isoplanatic angle, small subapertures and high correction speeds needed at visible wavelengths,…
Evolved stars dominate galactic spectra, enrich the galactic medium, expand to change their planetary systems, eject winds of a complex nature, produce spectacular nebulae and illuminate them, and transfer material between binary…
The selective light absorption in space has been raised in astronomical literature. The substance producing the absorption must have some mass; thus the question is how large it is. We develop a dynamical model of the Milky Way system,…
Aboriginal Australians carefully observe the properties and positions of stars, including both overt and subtle changes in their brightness, for subsistence and social application. These observations are encoded in oral tradition. I examine…
Celestial observations often exhibit inexplicable planetary dependencies when the timing of an observable is projected onto planetary heliocentric positions. This is possible only for incident, non-relativistic streams. Notably, the…
We develop the requirements and potential of spectropolarimetry as applied to understanding the physics of massive stars during the immediate, intermediate-term and long-term future.
The diameter of a star is a major observable that serves to test the validity of stellar structure theories. It is also a difficult observable that is mostly obtained with indirect methods since the stars are so remote. Today only ~600…
It is estimated that a star brighter than visual magnitude 17 is undergoing a detectable gravitational microlensing event, somewhere on the sky, at any given time. It is assumed that both lenses and sources are normal stars drawn from a…
I show that the standard microlensing technique to measure the angular radius of a star using color/surface-brightness relations can be inverted, via late-time proper motion measurements, to calibrate these relations. The method is…
With the advent of adaptive optics on the W. M. Keck 10 m telescope, two significant steps forward have been taken in building the case for a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way and understanding the black hole's effect…
We investigate the limits of ground-based astrometry with adaptive optics using the core of the Galactic globular cluster M5. Adaptive optics systems provide near diffraction-limit imaging with the world's largest telescopes. The…
Magnetic features on the surfaces of cool stars cause variations of their brightness. Such variations have been extensively studied for the Sun. Recent planet-hunting space telescopes allowed measuring brightness variations in hundred…
We use contemporary evolutionary models for Very Massive Stars (VMS) to assess whether the Eddington limit constrains the upper stellar mass limit. We also consider the interplay between mass and age for the wind properties and spectral…
It is widely believed that adaptive optics only has a role in correcting turbulent wavefronts on large telescopes using very bright reference stars. Unfortunately these are very scarce and many astronomical targets require wavefront…
The age of an individual star cannot be measured, only estimated through mostly model-dependent or empirical methods, and no single method works well for a broad range of stellar types or for a full range in age. This review presents a…
We extend the method introduced by Cinzano et al. (2000a) to map the artificial sky brightness in large territories from DMSP satellite data, in order to map the naked eye star visibility and telescopic limiting magnitudes. For these…
New high-resolution adaptive optics systems provide an unprecedentedly detailed view of nearby star forming regions. In particular, young nearby T Tauri stars can be probed at much smaller physical scales (a few AU) than possible just a…
During the last century, with the development of modern physics in such diverse fields as thermodynamics, statistical physics, and nuclear and particle physics, the basic principles of the evolution of stars have been successfully well…
We describe a method of determining the V magnitude of an asteroid using differential photometry, with the magnitudes of comparison stars derived from Carlsberg Meridian Catalogue 14 (CMC14) data. The availability of a large number of…
High-accuracy astrometry permits the determination of not only stellar tangential motion, but also the component along the line-of-sight. Such non-spectroscopic (i.e. astrometric) radial velocities are independent of stellar atmospheric…