Related papers: The controversial pen of Edwin Holmes
It is noted that effective very recently, the orbital motion of Encke's comet has become affected by a very slight nongravitational deceleration. Soon after J. F. Encke established in the early 19th century that the comet was returning to…
The mid-17th century saw unprecedented scientific progress. With the Middle Ages well and truly over, the Scientific Revolution had begun. However, scientific advancement does not always proceed along well-planned trajectories. Chance…
This year marks half a century since Stephen Hawking made his greatest scientific discovery by theoretically proving that black holes aint so black, as they behave like hot bodies with an absolute temperature that depends inversely on their…
John Ellard Gore FRAS, MRIA (1845-1910) was an Irish amateur astronomer and prolific author of popular astronomy books. His main observational interest was variable stars, of which he discovered several, and he served as the first Director…
Einstein in 1905, his year of miracles, wrote five papers which mark a watershed between classical physics and modern physics. They dealt with problem of reality of atoms, theory of special relativity which overthrew Newtonian conceptions…
Donati's comet was one of the most impressive astronomical events of the nineteenth century. Its extended sword-like tail was a spectacular sight that inspired several literary and artistic representations. Traces of Donati's comet are…
Jupiter family comet 17P/Holmes underwent a remarkable outburst on UT 2007 Oct. 24, in which the integrated brightness abruptly increased by about a factor of a million.We obtained near infrared (0.8 - 4.2 micron) spectra of 17P/Holmes on…
Comet 157P is a faint object with a history of being prone to unfortunate situations, circumstances, and/or coincidences. Several weeks after its 1978 discovery the comet disappeared and remained lost nonstop for twenty five years.…
Peter Higgs was a British theoretical physicist, famous for his work published in 1964, where he proposed a mechanism that can generate masses for elementary particles, while respecting gauge invariance. Half a century later, two…
Comet 17P/Holmes underwent the largest cometary outburst in recorded history on UT 2007 Oct. 23, releasing massive quantities of dust and gas. We used the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope to obtain wide-field images of 17P/Holmes on 15 dates…
In the year 1900 Max Planck was led by experimental observations to propose a strange formula for the intensity as a function of frequency for light emitted by a cavity. It relied on peculiar properties to be obeyed by the emitters and…
Harold Knox-Shaw (1885-1970) worked at the Helwan Observatory in Egypt from 1907 to 1924. The Observatory was equipped with a 30-inch (76 cm) reflector that was financed and constructed by the Birmingham industrialist, John Reynolds…
T. H. Astbury (1858-1922) was for many years the much-respected headmaster of a boys' junior school in the English market town of Wallingford. By night he was a dedicated amateur astronomer who enjoyed observing meteors, variable stars and…
Cornelis Easton (1864-1929) became a journalist and newspaper editor. During most of his career he was active as an amateur astronomer and contributed important papers in international astronomical journals This concerned three areas. The…
Stephen Hawkings most important scientific contribution was his theoretical discovery that black holes aint so black, since they emit thermal radiation as if they were hot bodies with an absolute temperature known as the Hawking…
Comet 17P/Holmes was observed for linear polarisation using the optical polarimeter mounted on the 1.2m telescope atop Gurushikhar peak near Mt. Abu during the period November-December 2007. Observations were conducted through the IHW…
Al Cameron, who died recently (October 3, 2005) at 80, was one of the giants in astrophysics. His insights were profound and his interests were wide-ranging. Originally trained as a nuclear physicist, he made major contributions in a number…
In 1839 Ebenezer Porter Mason (1819-1840) produced detailed drawings of the Omega Nebula (M17), the Trifid Nebula (M20) and the eastern part of the Veil Nebula (NGC 6992 and 6995). He used a 12-inch (30 cm) reflector that he and his friends…
We present time-resolved photometric observations of Jupiter family comet 17P/Holmes during its dramatic outburst of 2007. The observations, from the orbiting Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI), provide the most complete measure of the…
The purpose of this note consists of discrete rational reconstruction which took place during the years 1609-1630 and 1630-1666, ie, the year of the publication of their Astronomia Nova and the year of death of the great German astronomer…