Related papers: Die Gerling Sternwarte (Gerling Astronomical Obser…
The gravitational lensing of a finite star moving around a rotating Kerr black hole has been numerically calculated. Calculations for the direct image of the star and for the first and second light echoes have been performed for the star…
While building up a catalog of Earth orbiting objects, if the available optical observations are sparse, not deliberate follow ups of specific objects, no orbit determination is possible without previous correlation of observations obtained…
In 1859, Le Verrier discovered the mercury perihelion advance anomaly. This anomaly turned out to be the first relativistic-gravity effect observed. During the 141 years to 2000, the precisions of laboratory and space experiments, and…
The application of photography to astronomy was a critical step in the development of astrophysics at the end of the nineteenth century. Using custom-built photographic telescopes and objective prisms, astronomers took images of the sky on…
Astrometry, the measurement of positions and motions of the stars, is one of the oldest disciplines in Astronomy, extending back at least as far as Hipparchus' discovery of the precession of Earth's axes in 190 BCE by comparing his catalog…
The Einstein rings and proper motions of nearby stars tend to be large. Thus, every year some foreground stars within a few hundred parsecs of Earth induce gravitational lensing events in background stars. In some of these cases, the events…
For decades, perhaps even centuries, the exchange of publications between observatories was the most important source of information on new astronomical results, either in the form of observational data or new scientific theories. In…
Although not designed as an astrometric instrument, Kepler is expected to produce astrometric results of a quality appropriate to support many of the astrophysical investigations enabled by its photometric results. On the basis of data…
Binary stars are crucial laboratories for stellar physics, so have been photometric targets for space missions beginning with the very first orbiting telescope (OAO-2) launched in 1968. This review traces the binary stars observed and the…
We describe the second telescope of the Wise Observatory, a 0.46-m Centurion 18 (C18) installed in 2005, which enhances significantly the observing possibilities. The telescope operates from a small dome and is equipped with a large-format…
The 1.0 metre f/4 fast-slew Zadko Telescope was installed in June 2008 approximately seventy kilometres north of Perth at Yeal, in the Shire of Gingin, Western Australia. Since the Zadko Telescope has been in operation it has proven its…
In 1936 Einstein predicted the phenomenon presently known as gravitational lensing (GL). A prime feature of GL is the magnification, because of the gravitational field, of the star visible surface as seen from a distant observer. We show…
We present the discovery of a planet on a very wide orbit in the microlensing event OGLE-2012-BLG-0838. The signal of the planet is well separated from the main peak of the event and the planet-star projected separation is found to be twice…
Perhaps more than other physical sciences, astronomy is frequently statistical in nature. The objects under study are inaccessible to direct manipulation in the laboratory, so the astronomer is restricted to observing a few external…
Traditional approaches to measuring the stellar mass function (MF) are fundamentally limited because objects are detected based on their luminosity, not their mass. These methods are thereby restricted to luminous and relatively nearby…
The Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), a premier autonomous research institute under the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India has a legacy of about seven decades with contributions made in…
I recall my "first hour" events following on my meeting in Fall 1968 in the classroom with my academic teacher and thesis mentor Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. multiple Walter Greiner. My comments focus on the creation of the new "strong fields" domain…
Kepler, K2, TESS, and similar time-domain photometric projects, while designed with exoplanet detection in mind, are also well-suited projects for searches for large artificial structures orbiting other stars in the Galaxy. An effort to…
The Large Area Telescope on the recently launched Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (formerly GLAST), with its large field of view and effective area, combined with its excellent timing capabilities, is poised to revolutionize the field of…
More than 100 microlensing events have been detected during the last ~4 years, most of them towards the Galactic Bulge. Since the line of sight towards the Bulge passes through the disk and the Bulge itself, the known stars towards the…