Related papers: V.M. Slipher and the Development of the Nebular Sp…
Who discovered the expanding universe? Was it Hubble, or Lema\^itre, or was it just the end result of a long series of investigations? In this article we summarise the main steps and contributions that led to one of the most exciting…
The link between the shaping of bipolar planetary nebulae and their central stars is still poorly understood. The kinematics and shaping of the multipolar nebula M 1-75 are hereby investigated, and the location and nature of its central…
Scientific research is a continuous process, and the speed of future progress can be estimated by the pace of finding explanations for previous research questions. In this observers based view of stellar pulsation and asteroseismology, we…
As the second step in our investigation of the mass-to-light ratio of spiral disks, we present the results of a spectroscopic survey of planetary nebulae (PNe) in five nearby, low-inclination galaxies: IC 342, M74 (NGC 628), M83 (NGC 5236),…
We review the evolution of our understanding of the planetary nebulae phenomenon and their place in the scheme of stellar evolution. The historical steps leading to our current understanding of central star evolution and nebular formation…
It has now been just over four decades since the first discovery of a millisecond spin period pulsar (MSP), B1937+21, by Don Backer and collaborators in late 1982. This finding of an entirely new class of astronomical object revolutionized…
A new database from the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) of galaxy Distances (NED-D), normally the source for the newest precision-based estimates, provides access to the oldest redshift-independent extragalactic distances in the…
The recent literature of astronomy and cosmology has included a good many suggestions for "who first recognized the expansion of the universe?" with cases having been made for Lemaitre, Lundmark, de Sitter, Slipher, Shapley, Friedmann,…
The planetary nebula populations of relatively nearby galaxies can be easily observed and provide both a distance estimate and a tool with which dynamical information can be obtained. Usually the requisite radial velocities are obtained by…
The Hubble constant Ho describes not only the expansion of local space at redshift z ~ 0, but is also a fundamental parameter determining the evolution of the universe. Recent measurements of Ho anchored on Cepheid observations have reached…
In this methodological note we discuss some details and peculiarities of the cosmic expansion as viewed by a realistic observer. We show that the velocity $v_\Theta$ related to a change (measured by observer's clock) of the angular…
Our velocity relative to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) generates a dipole from the CMB monopole, which was accurately measured by COBE. The relative velocity also modulates and aberrates the CMB fluctuations, generating a small…
The neutrino speed measurement experiments are the continuations of the classic light speed measurement experiments have been done in range of the solar planet system (Ole Roemer, 1676), in star system (James Braidely, 1728) and, at last,…
We define a scalar measure of the local expansion rate based on how astronomers determine the Hubble constant. Our observable is the inverse conformal d'Alembertian acting on a unit ``standard candle.'' Because this quantity is an integral…
For 100 years since galaxies were found to be flying apart from each other, astronomers have been trying to determine how fast. The expansion, characterized by the Hubble constant, H0, is confused locally by peculiar velocities caused by…
Proposed space-based gravitational-wave detectors such as BBO and DECIGO can detect ~10^6 neutron-star binaries and determine luminosity distance to the binaries with a high precision. Combining the luminosity distance and…
In the early seventies, Alan Sandage defined cosmology as the search for two numbers: Hubble parameter ${{H}_{0}}$ and deceleration parameter ${{q}_{0}}$. The first of the two basic cosmological parameters (the Hubble parameter) describes…
A major goal of modern astrophysics is to understand the processes by which the universe evolved from its initial simplicity, as seen in measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, to the universe we see today, with complexity on all…
Stellar surface processes represent a fundamental limit to the detection of extrasolar planets with the currently most heavily-used techniques. As such, considerable effort has gone into trying to mitigate the impact of these processes on…
Observational cosmology of the first decades of the Twentieth Century was dominated by two giants: Edwin Hubble and Harlow Shapley. Hubble's major contributions were to the study and classification of individual galaxies with large…