Related papers: Aberration of starlight experiment
The theory of measurement is employed to elucidate the physical basis of general relativity. For measurements involving phenomena with intrinsic length or time scales, such scales must in general be negligible compared to the (translational…
Gravitational weak lensing by large scale structures is view as a tool to probe the bias relation between the mass and the light distributions. It is explained how a particular statistic can be used to deproject the 2D mass distribution…
During the 17th century the idea of an orbiting and rotating Earth became increasingly popular, but opponents of this view continued to point out that the theory had observable consequences that had never, in fact, been observed. Why, for…
Laboratory (laser and Z-pinch) opacity measurements of well-characterized plasmas provide data to assist inertial confinement fusion, astrophysics and atomic-physics research. In order to test the atomic-physics codes devoted to the…
Detecting binary stars in photometric time series is traditionally done by measuring eclipses. This requires the orbital plane to be aligned with the observer. A new method without that requirement uses stellar oscillations to measure…
Measurements of the spectrum of the fluctuations of the output current of the quadratic detector of a telescope can be used to find unresolved astronomical gravitational lenses and determine time delays between their image components. These…
In this paper we propose an experiment designed to observe a general-relativistic effect on single photon interference. The experiment consists of a folded Mach-Zehnder interferometer, with the arms distributed between a single Earth…
Although a system is described by a well-known set of equations leading to a deterministic behavior, in the real world the value of a measurand obtained by an experiment will mostly scatter. Accordingly, an uncertainty is associated with…
We present a fully relativistic calculation of the observed galaxy number counts in the linear regime. We show that besides the density fluctuations and redshift-space distortions, various relativistic effects contribute to observations at…
The measurement of the integrated optical polarization of weakly gravitationally lensed galaxies can provide considerable constraints on lens models. The method outlined depends on fact that the orientation of the direction of optical…
An improved formula for the timing of binary pulsars that accounts for the relativistic deflection of light in the gravitational field of the pulsar's companion is presented, and the measurability of this effect together with its variance…
Follow the big stars! I review the theory of detection and parameter measurement of planetary systems by follow-up observations of ongoing microlensing events. Two parameters can generically be measured from the event itself: the…
The paper contains a proposed experiment for testing the angular momentum effect on the propagation of light around a rotating mass. The idea is to use a rotating spherical laboratory-scale shell, around which two mutually orthogonal light…
We present total and specular reflectance measurements of various materials that are commonly (and uncommonly) used to provide baffling and/or to minimize the effect of stray light in optical systems. More specifically, we investigate the…
The aim of the DeLLight (Deflection of Light by Light) experiment is to observe for the first time the optical nonlinearity in vacuum, as predicted by Quantum Electrodynamics, by measuring the refraction of a low-intensity focused laser…
Modelling is essential for studies that quantify the impact from satellite downlinks on radio astronomy sites. To estimate this impact it is necessary to know not only the position and velocity of satellites but also their behaviour in the…
Distance measurement is crucial to astronomy. Here we suggest a new conceptual method to measure the distance by using a local instrument. By engaging the double-slit interference and by considering the phase information of the light, the…
Upcoming and current large astronomical survey experiments often seek to constrain cosmological parameters via measurements of subtle effects such as weak lensing, which can only be measured statistically. In these cases, instrumental…
The Einstein time scale, which is the only information obtained from current microlensing experiments, results from a complicated combination of the lens parameters that we want to determine. Of the methods for breaking the lens parameter…
The description of an observer's measurement in general relativity and the standard model of particle physics is closely related to the spacetime metric. In order to understand and interpret measurements, which test the metric structure of…