Related papers: Weighing the Sun with five photographs
The revision of the photospheric abundances proferred by Asplund et al has rendered opacity theory inconsistent with the seismologically determined opacity through the Sun. This highlights the need for a direct seismological measurement of…
The knowledge of isotopic and elemental abundances of the pristine solar system material provides a fundamental test of galactic chemical evolution models, while the composition of the solar photosphere is a reference pattern to understand…
The modern optical telescopes produce a huge number of asteroid observations, that are grouped into very short arcs (VSAs), each containing a few observations of the same object in one single night. To decide whether two VSAs, collected in…
High-precision pulsar timing relies on a solar-system ephemeris in order to convert times of arrival (TOAs) of pulses measured at an observatory to the solar system barycenter. Any error in the conversion to the barycentric TOAs leads to a…
Having started science operations in May 2009, the Kepler photometer has been able to provide exquisite data of solar-like stars. Five out of the 42 stars observed continuously during the survey phase show evidence of oscillations, even…
The observations of solar photosphere from the ground encounter significant problems due to the presence of Earth's turbulent atmosphere. Prior to applying image reconstruction techniques, the frames obtained in most favorable atmospheric…
In this work we study in details the influence of pure astronomical refraction on solar metrologic measurements made from ground-based full disk imagery and provide the tools for correcting the measurements and estimating the associated…
The physical principles and the mathematical structure involved in deriving an analytical representation of the internal structure of the sun are discussed. For a two-parameter family of a non-linear matter density distribution, the run of…
Meteor showers on the Earth occur at well known times, and are associated with the decay of comets or other minor bodies whose orbital paths pass close to the Earth's trajectory. On the surface, determining the closest proximity of two…
The orbital displacement of the Moon is known to a precision on the order of centimeters from the lunar laser ranging data, while the lunar profile's confidence level is still only about 200 m. The lunar motion is used to measure the solar…
Currently, over forty transiting planets have been discovered by ground-based photometric surveys, and space-based missions like Kepler and CoRoT are expected to detect hundreds more. Follow-up photometric observations from the ground will…
All 4 giant planets in the Solar System host systems of multiple moons, whereas the terrestrial planets only host up to 2 moons. The Earth can capture small asteroids as temporary satellites, which begs the question as to how many moons…
NASA's Kepler mission will fly a photometer based on a wide-field Schmidt camera with a 0.95 m aperture, staring at a single field continuously for at least 4 years. Although the mission's principal aim is to locate transiting extrasolar…
The book on Mechanics of the Physics at Berkeley, by C. Kittel, W.D. Knight and M.A. Ruderman, is proposing at the end of its first chapter some problems of simple astronomy within the solar system. The discussion begins with two amateur…
The detection of the New Moon at sunset is of importance to communities based on the lunar calendar. This is traditionally undertaken with visual observations. We propose a radio method which allows a higher visibility of the Moon relative…
This paper presents the results of measurements of diurnal variations in the single electron count rate arising from dark photon conversion at the cathode of a gas proportional counter. Three experimental series were conducted, each…
The non-spherical shape of the Sun has been invoked to explain the anomalous precession of Mercury. A brief history of some methods for measuring solar diameter is presented. Archimedes was the first to give upper and lower values for solar…
A smartphone is a powerful learning aid in the hands of a large section of students around the world. The camera of the phone can be used for several learning purposes apart from its obvious purpose of photographing. If the focal length of…
Efforts to place limits on deviations from canonical formulations of electromagnetism and gravity have probed length scales increasing dramatically over time.Historically, these studies have passed through three stages: (1) Testing the…
Hydrostatic equilibrium and energy conservation determine the conditions in the gravitationally stabilized solar fusion reactor. We assume a matter density distribution varying non-linearly through the central region of the Sun. The…