Related papers: What Else Did V. M. Slipher Do?
This article presents hitherto unpublished correspondence of Struble in 1947 with Menger, Chandrasekhar, and eventually Einstein, about a possible observational test supporting Einstein's special relativity against Ritz's emission theory…
Stellar activity and rotation frustrate the detection of exoplanets through the radial velocity technique. This effect is particularly of concern for M dwarfs, which can remain magnetically active for billions of years. We compile rotation…
The disciplines of asteroseismology and extrasolar planet science overlap methodically in the branch of high-precision photometric time series observations. Light curves are, amongst others, useful to measure intrinsic stellar variability…
Analysis of transit times in exoplanetary systems accurately provides an instantaneous orbital period, $P(t)$, of their member planets. A long-term monitoring of those transiting planetary systems puts limits on the variability of $P(t)$,…
Kepler's quest for other Earths need not end just yet: it remains capable of characterizing cool Earth-mass planets by microlensing, even given its degraded pointing control. If Kepler were pointed at the Galactic bulge, it could conduct a…
Short-period super-Earths and Neptunes are now known to be very frequent around solar-type stars. Improving our understanding of these mysterious planets requires the detection of a significant sample of objects suitable for detailed…
In February 1700, Isaac Newton needed a precise tropical year to design a new universal calendar that would supersede the Gregorian one. However, 17th-Century astronomers were uncertain of the long-term variation in the inclination of the…
Pulsars have now been studied for 34 years. We know of the existence of some 1500 objects at radio frequencies. Many of the characteristics of pulsars such as pulsar period, period derivative, spectrum, polarization, etc., have been…
The overarching goal of planetary astronomy is to deduce how the present collection of objects found in our Solar System were formed from the original material present in the proto-solar nebula. As over two hundred exo-planetary systems are…
The study of the Universe and all its contents, the physical phenomena and the evolution of the sky objects has always attracted the Humanity. The Astronomy begins to try to explain these things, others sciences too. Therefore, we think a…
NASA's Kepler Mission uses transit photometry to determine the frequency of earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. The mission reached a milestone toward meeting that goal: the discovery of its first rocky…
The signatures of planets hosted by M dwarfs are more readily detected with transit photometry and radial velocity methods than those of planets around larger stars. Recently, transit photometry was used to discover seven planets orbiting…
The Lick planet search program began in 1987 when the first spectrum of $\tau$ Ceti was taken with an iodine cell and the Hamilton Spectrograph. Upgrades to the instrument improved the Doppler precision from about 10 m/s in 1992 to about 3…
We have obtained a far-ultraviolet spectrum of the X-ray binary Hercules X-1/HZ Herculis using the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope aboard the Astro-1 space shuttle mission in 1990 December. This is the first spectrum of Her X-1 that extends…
We show that the Kepler spacecraft in two-reaction wheel mode of operation is very well suited for the study of eclipsing binary star systems. Continued observations of the Kepler field will provide the most enduring and long-term valuable…
In this introductory review presented at the IAU Symposium 253 "Transiting Planets", I summarize the path from the initial 1995 radial-velocity discovery of hot Jupiters to the current rich panoply of investigations that are afforded when…
Although the first millisecond pulsars (MSPs) were discovered 30 years ago we still do not understand all details of their formation process. Here, we present new results from Tauris, Langer & Kramer (2012) on the recycling scenario leading…
We revisit the discovery and implications of the first candidate systems to contain multiple transiting exoplanets. These systems were discovered using data from the Kepler space telescope. The initial paper, presenting five systems…
Spectroscopy is one of the most important tools that an astronomer has for studying the universe. This chapter begins by discussing the basics, including the different types of optical spectrographs, with extension to the ultraviolet and…
Since the dawn of telescopic astronomy astronomers have observed and measured the "spurious" telescopic disks of stars, generally reporting that brighter stars have larger disks than fainter stars. Early observers such as Galileo Galilei…