Related papers: Boscovich and the Brera Observatory
I give a brief history of astronomical observatories as an institution. This includes: 1) observatories in Islam; 2) China and India; 3) early European observatories; 4) the rise of national observatories; 5) private (amateur)…
We address the phenomenon of reflection in concave spherical mirror in two contrasting approaches to optics. In his Optics (ca.165) Ptolemy applied the cathetus principle as a regulative means for explaining qualitatively effects related to…
Mars has surely been scrutinised since the dawn of humankind. In the 16th century Tycho Brahe made accurate observations of the position of Mars that enabled Johannes Kepler to obtain his first two laws of planetary motion. In the 17th…
Augusta Praetoria Salassorum, modern Aosta, was founded around 25 BC to celebrate the victory of Augustus army on the Salassi. Aosta is a city of the founder under many respects; for instance, one of the two twin temples of the forum was…
By c. 3000 BC, in the late Neolithic, there had been a significant change in the way people materialized their cosmology across Scotland with the introduction of free-standing stones. These were erected almost until the end of the Bronze…
I summarize the excitement of my role primarily in the early years of X-ray Astronomy. As a "second-generation" X-ray astronomer, I was privileged to participate in the enormous advance of the field, both technically and astrophysically,…
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…
First, we summarize the four-year long efforts undertaken to build the final setup of the APACHE Project, a photometric transit search for small-size planets orbiting bright, low-mass M dwarfs. Next, we describe the present status of the…
In memory of the famous physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, whereof is just occurred the centenary anniversary of the birth and the twentieth anniversary of the death, this paper traces the scientific and human adventure of the italian scientist,…
We discuss the significance of some interesting results by Barbara Rokowska about combinatorial constructions. Her interest in finite mathematics and number theory began with an embellishment and detailing of some work by Erdos. Rokowska…
We look at what astronomy from the Moon might be like in the visible over the next few decades. The Moon offers the possibility of installing large telescopes or interferometers with instruments larger than those on orbiting telescopes. We…
Throughout human history, people have used sight to learn about the world, but only in relatively recent times the science of light has been developed. Egyptians and Mesopotamians made the first known lenses out of quartz, giving birth to…
Longitude determination at sea gained increasing commercial importance in the late Middle Ages, spawned by a commensurate increase in long-distance merchant shipping activity. Prior to the successful development of an accurate marine…
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile, is the largest astronomical project in existence. While ALMA's…
We discuss the reception of Copernican astronomy by the Proven\c{c}al humanists of the XVIth-XVIIth centuries, beginning with Michel de Montaigne who was the first to recognize the potential scientific and philosophical revolution…
Wherever old Universities exist [in Europe, for example: Italy being not the last one], there can be found Scientific Instruments of Historical Interest, e.g., for Physics -which is the case we are concerned with here;- even if proper…
The 450th anniversary of the discovery of the SN 1572 supernova event was celebrated in 2022. A closer look at the historical development of the field of supernova astronomy reveals the scientific importance of Tycho Brahe's 1572…
Supportive attitudes can bring to a blossoming science, while neglect can quickly make science absent from everyday life and provide a very primitive view of the world. We compare one important Greek achievement, the computation of the…
Galileo Galilei believed that stars were distant suns whose sizes, measured via his telescope, were a direct indication of distance -- fainter stars (appearing smaller in the telescope) were farther away than brighter ones. Galileo argued…
This proceeding contribution is a short summary of the invited talk about observational supernova science at Stockholm University that has been conducted at the Nordic Optical Telescope over the past 25 years, and some expectations for the…