Related papers: Santa and the moon
Massive stars are at the core of our observations of the Universe up to the reionization epoch, both through their intense ionizing fluxes and through the energetic end products that release fresh elements into the interstellar medium. Our…
Education is a prerequisite to master the challenges of space science and technology. Efforts to understand and control space science and technology are necessarily intertwined with social expressions in the cultures where science and…
Forty years ago, Apollo astronauts placed the first of several retroreflector arrays on the lunar surface. Their continued usefulness for laser-ranging might suggest that the lunar environment does not damage optical devices. However, new…
Cartograms are maps in which areas of geographic regions (countries, states) appear in proportion to some variable of interest (population, income). Cartograms are popular visualizations for geo-referenced data that have been used for over…
These lecture notes aim to provide an introduction to dark matter from the perspective of astrophysics/cosmology. We start with a rapid overview of cosmology, including the evolution of the Universe, its thermal history and structure…
Did the papacy tacitly permit the circulation of an explicitly Copernican book in 1660? One scholar has recently argued that it did. A close analysis of a unique illustration from that book, Andreas Cellarius's atlas Harmonia Macrocosmica,…
After decades of effort, the solar activity cycle is exceptionally well characterized but it remains poorly understood. Pioneering work at the Mount Wilson Observatory demonstrated that other sun-like stars also show regular activity…
The study of the morphology of galaxies is important in order to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies and their sub-components as a function of luminosity, environment, and star-formation and galaxy assembly over cosmic time.…
A brief review of the present-day development of cosmology is presented for mixed physical audience. The universe history is briefly described. Unsolved problems are discussed, in particular, the mystery of the cosmological constant and…
In recent years, massive new spectroscopic data sets, such as the over half million stellar spectra obtained during the course of SDSS (in particular its sub-survey SEGUE), have provided the quantitative detail required to formulate a…
Solar astrometry deals with the accurate measumerent of the solar diameter, and in general with the measurement of the shape of the Sun. During the last decades several techniques have been developed to monitor the radius and the irradiance…
A recent contribution to research on age and well-being (Blanchflower 2021) found that the impact of age on happiness is "u-shaped" virtually everywhere: happiness declines towards middle age and subsequently rises, in almost all countries.…
In Papers II and III we show that Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLPs) are likely related to lunar outgassing, albeit in ways not fully understood. Here we propose a path forward, in which current and forthcoming technologies provide a more…
Charts are used to communicate data visually, but often, we do not know whether a chart's intended message aligns with the message readers perceive. In this mixed-methods study, we investigate how data journalists encode data and how…
We analyse a high resolution simulation of the formation of a cluster's dark-matter halo in a $\Lambda$CDM cosmology (Springel et al. 2001). The resolution achieved allows us to map the phase-space structure in detail, and characterize its…
In recent years, by theory and observation cosmology has advanced substantially. Parameters of the concordance or $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model are given with unprecedented precision ("precision cosmology"). On the other side, 95% of the…
With the new discoveries enabled thanks to the recent space missions, stellar physics is going through a revolution. However, these discoveries opened the door to many new questions that require more observations. The European Space…
The anomalous heating of the solar upper atmosphere is one of the eight key problems in modern astronomy. Moreover, the stratification of the solar atmosphere is an outstanding key-problem in solar physics. In this study, a hot…
Though it may be a behavior that has been observed and documented for millennia, and despite the connection between it and the full moon, the astronomical community has afforded very little attention to lycanthropy. We hope to address this…
"Show, don't tell" has become the literary commandment for any writer. It applies to all forms of fiction, and to non-fiction, including scientific writing, where it lies at the heart of many scientific communication and storytelling…