Related papers: The October 10, 1912 solar eclipse expeditions and…
Direct remote-sensing observations of the solar poles have been hindered by the restricted view obtained from the ecliptic plane. For the first time ever, Solar Orbiter with its remote-sensing instruments observed the poles of the Sun from…
Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard theory of gravity, especially where the needs of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics are concerned. As such, this theory is used for many practical purposes…
In this paper we will show in detail that the performed attempts aimed at the detection of the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational field of the Earth with the existing LAGEOS satellites are often presented in an…
The orbital period loss of the compact binary systems is the first indirect evidence of gravitational waves which agrees well with Einstein's general theory of relativity to a very good accuracy. However, there is less than one percent…
We consider strong gravitational lensing by nearby stars. Using our wave-optical treatment of lensing phenomena, we study Einstein rings that may form around nearby stellar lenses. It is remarkable that these rings are bright and large…
Proposed by Maxwell in 1879 detector of aether seems, at a superficial glance, a simple device. For example, Michelson in 1881 thought that he built an instrument that (when you turn it in the horizontal plane) will measure in vacuum…
The Earth's albedo is a fundamental climate parameter for understanding the radiation budget of the atmosphere. It has been traditionally measured from space platforms, but also from the ground for sixteen years from Big Bear Solar…
The transit of Mercury occurred two times in this century: 2003, May 7 and 2006, November 8. In 2016 there is another opportunity to observe this phenomenon and measure the solar diameter with the method of comparing the ephemerides 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…
Gravitational wave experiments have entered a new stage which gets us closer to the opening a new observational window on the Universe. In particular, the Einstein Telescope (ET) is designed to have a fantastic sensitivity that will provide…
Earthshine is sunlight that has been reflected from the dayside Earth onto the dark side of the Moon and back again to Earth. In recent times, there has been renewed interest in ground-based visible and near-infrared measurements of…
Einstein's theory of general relativity states that clocks at different gravitational potentials tick at different rates - an effect known as the gravitational redshift. As fundamental probes of space and time, atomic clocks have long…
MG 1131+0456 is a radio-selected gravitational lens, and is the first known Einstein ring. Discovered in 1988, the system consists of a bright radio source imaged into a ring and two compact, flat-spectrum components separated by 2.1…
The general relativistic Lense-Thirring precessions of the perihelia of the inner planets of the Solar System are about 10^-3 arcseconds per century. Recent improvements in planetary orbit determination may yield the first observational…
In 2002 a measurement of the effect of solar gravity upon the phase of coherent microwave beams passing near the Sun has been carried out with the Cassini mission, allowing a very accurate measurement of the PPN parameter $\gamma$. The data…
The fields of occultation and microlensing are linked historically. Early this century, occultation of the Sun by the Moon allowed the apparent positions of background stars projected near the limb of the Sun to be measured and compared…
Using spectroscopy from the Large Binocular Telescope and imaging from the Hubble Space Telescope we discovered the first strong galaxy lens at z(lens)>1. The lens has a secure photometric redshift of z=1.53+/-0.09 and the source is…
Einstein's theory of general relativity was proposed over 100 years ago and has successfully passed a large number of observational tests in the weak field regime. However, the strong field regime is largely unexplored, and there are many…
The paper contains a proposed experiment for testing the gravitomagnetic 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…
Deflection of light due to massive objects was predicted by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity. This deflection of light has been calculated by many researchers in past, for spherically symmetric objects. But, in reality, most of…