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We have designed an inquiry-based laboratory activity on transiting extrasolar planets for an introductory college-level astronomy class. The activity was designed with the intent of simultaneously teaching science process skills and…
Solar flares are energetic events taking place in the Sun's atmosphere, and their effects can greatly impact the environment of the surrounding planets. In particular, eruptive flares, as opposed to confined flares, launch coronal mass…
In the period from about 1890 to 1915 an interdisciplinary and unifying research programme known as "cosmical physics" attracted much scientific and public attention. It typically included aspects of the earth sciences (such as magnetic…
In addition to its search for extra-solar planets, the NASA Kepler Mission provides exquisite data on stellar oscillations. We report the detections of oscillations in 500 solartype stars in the Kepler field of view, an ensemble that is…
Electricity in the atmosphere provides an ideal topic for educational outreach in environmental science. To support this objective, a simple instrument to measure real atmospheric electrical parameters has been developed and its performance…
We propose an experiment using a conventional optical telescope to determine whether aberration of starlight results from special relativistic effects external to a measurement sensor or from optical effects within a sensor. The proposed…
Since the first microlensing planet discovery in 2003, more than 200 planets have been detected with gravitational microlensing, in addition to several free-floating planet and black hole candidates. In this chapter the microlensing theory…
I observe that, as the physics side of the OPERA-anomaly story is apparently unfolding, there can still be motivation for philosophy of science to analyze the six months of madness physicists spent chasing the dream of a new…
Here, we present a simple solution to problems that have plagued (extra)"galactic" astronomers and cosmologists over the last century. We show that "galaxy" formation, dark matter, and the tension in the expansion of the universe can all be…
The observation of high energy extraterrestrial neutrinos can be an invaluable source of information about the most energetic phenomena in the Universe. Neutrinos can shed light on the processes that accelerate charge particles in an…
The mission of NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) is to find Earth-like planets orbiting other stars and characterize the atmospheres of these planets using spectroscopy. Because of the enormous brightness ratio between the star and the…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
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…
Aurorae are detected from all the magnetized planets in our Solar System, including Earth. They are powered by magnetospheric current systems that lead to the precipitation of energetic electrons into the high-latitude regions of the upper…
NASA's Great Observatories have opened up the electromagnetic spectrum from space, providing sustained access to wavelengths not accessible from the ground. Together, Hubble, Compton, Chandra, and Spitzer have provided the scientific…
The ProAm effort in modern astronomy and astrophysics is now a reality. The achievements of amateur astronomers throughout the early history of astronomy are well known. However, during the 20th century, the high specialisation and the…
Astrophysics = the star physics was beginning its development without a supporting of measurement data, which could not be obtained then. Still astrophysics exists without this support, although now astronomers collected a lot of valuable…
The ultraviolet (UV) window has been largely unexplored through balloons for astronomy. We discuss here the development of a compact near-UV spectrograph with fiber optics input for balloon ights. It is a modified Czerny-Turner system built…
We report development of a simple and affordable radio interferometer suitable as an educational laboratory experiment. With the increasing importance of interferometry in astronomy, the lack of educational interferometers is an obstacle to…
Pulsar wind nebulae are fascinating systems, and archetypal sources for high-energy astrophysics in general. Due to their vicinity, brightness, to the fact that they shine at multi-wavelengths, and especially to their long-living emission…