Related papers: Nominal values for selected solar and planetary qu…
Astronomers commonly quote the properties of celestial objects in units of parameters for the Sun, Jupiter, or the Earth. The resolution presented here was proposed by the IAU Inter-Division Working Group on Nominal Units for Stellar and…
The increasing precision of astronomical observations of stars and stellar systems is gradually getting to a level where the use of slightly different values of the solar mass, radius and luminosity, as well as different values of…
The XXIXth IAU General Assembly in Honolulu adopted IAU 2015 Resolution B2 on recommended zero points for the absolute and apparent bolometric magnitude scales. The resolution was proposed by the IAU Inter-Division A-G Working Group on…
The IAU-1976 System of astronomical constants includes three astronomical units (i.e. for time, mass and length). This paper reports on the status of the astronomical unit of length (ua) and mass (MSun) within the context of the recent IAU…
Recent resolutions passed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) on astronomical reference systems, time scales, and Earth rotation models are the most significant set of international agreements in positional astronomy in several…
Measurements of physical parameters for stars and (exo)planets are often quoted in units normalized to the Sun and/or Earth. The nominal total solar irradiance, ${S}^{\rm N}_{\odot}$, while based on a current best estimate with…
More than 635 000 positional observations (mostly radiotechnical) of planets and spacecraft (1961-2010), have been used for estimating possible changes of the gravitation constant, the solar mass, and semi-major axes of planets, as well as…
The current IAU definition of "planet" is problematic because it is vague and excludes exoplanets. Here, we describe aspects of quantitative planetary taxonomy and examine the results of unsupervised clustering of Solar System bodies to…
International Astronomical Union (IAU) has passed the must needed definition of planet in its general assembly held in Prague during August 2006. The definition had to be passed by means of voting. A group of scientists who raised the…
This paper discusses the IAU Resolutions B1.3, B1.4, B1.5 and B1.9 (2000) that were adopted during the 24th General Assembly in Manchester, 2000 and provides details and explanations for these Resolutions. It is explained why they present…
The present naming convention for extrasolar planets used by the vast majority of researchers in the field is based upon an interpretation of the provisional I.A.U. standard for multiple star systems. With the existence of hundreds of…
IAU 2000 resolutions on the reference frames set up a solid theoretical foundation for implementing general relativity in astronomical data processing algorithms and for unambiguous interpretation of measured relativistic effects. We…
In 2019 the International System of units (SI) conceptually re-invented itself. This was necessary because quantum-electronic devices had become so precise that the old SI could no longer calibrate them. The new system defines values of…
I present a highly biased and skewed summary of IAU Symposium 314, "Young Stars and Planets Near the Sun," held in Atlanta. This summary includes takeaway thoughts about the rapidly evolving state of the field, as well as crowd-sourced…
The metric recommanded by the IAU2000 resolutions allows propagation of light calculations at the c-3 level in the general relativity framework. In a recent paper [1], motivated by forthcoming space experiments involving propagation of…
Arbitrariness in the zero point of bolometric corrections is a nearly century-old paradigm leading to two more paradigms. "Bolometric corrections must always be negative," and "bolometric magnitude of a star ought to be brighter than its…
The radiative and particulate loss of mass by the Sun, -9.13*10^-14 Solar masses per year or more causes the orbits of the planets to expand at the same rate, and their periods to lengthen at twice this rate. Unfortunately, under the…
DEM analysis is a major diagnostic tool for stellar atmospheres. But both its derivation and its interpretation are notably difficult because of random and systematic errors, and the inverse nature of the problem. We use simulations with…
Future use of type Ia supernovae for cosmology aims not only to determine the equation of state of dark energy, but also to constrain possible variations in its value. To achieve this goal, supernovae need to become better calibrated…
Planetary nebulae are the products of the evolution of low and intermediate mass stars. The chemical property studies of these objects give important information about the elemental abundances as He, O, Ne, Ar, S and their modifications…