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Galaxies are complex systems the evolution of which apparently results from the interplay of dynamics, star formation, chemical enrichment, and feedback from supernova explosions and supermassive black holes. The hierarchical theory of…
The Orion complex is arguably the most studied star-forming region in the Galaxy. While stars are still being born in the Orion nebula, the oldest part was believed to be no more than 13 Myr old. In order to study the full hierarchy of star…
Reconstructions of the paleoclimate indicate that ancient climatic fluctuations on Earth are often correlated with variations in its orbital elements. However, the chaos inherent in the solar system's orbital evolution prevents numerical…
Spectroscopic multiplicity surveys of O stars in young clusters and OB associations have revealed that a large portion ($\sim$ 70%) of these massive stars (M$_{i}$ $\gt$ 15 $M_{\odot}$) belong to close and short-period binaries (physical…
The aim of Galactic archaeology is to recover the history of our Galaxy through the information encoded in stars. An unprobed assumption of this field is that the chemical composition of a star is an immutable marker of the gas from which…
There is a good cause to assert that the Easter Islanders constantly watched Aldebaran and the Pleiades in the past. The Russian scholar Irina K. Fedorova and the American scholar Georgia Lee were the first who contributed significantly to…
The distribution on the sky of clusters of galaxies shows significant association with relatively nearby, large, active galaxies. The pattern is that of clusters paired equidistant across a central galaxy with the apparent magnitudes and…
Zeno's paradoxes are explained as being the result of inappropriate combination of discrete and continuous mathematical systems. It is proposed that the source of this confusion lies in the course of development of the number system, which…
Parallax data from the Hipparcos mission allow the direct distance to open clusters to be compared with the distance inferred from main sequence (MS) fitting. There are surprising differences between the two distance measurements, which…
We describe the results of a search for the remnants of the Sun's birth cluster among stars in the Hipparcos Catalogue. This search is based on the predicted phase space distribution of the Sun's siblings from simple simulations of the…
Based on the large number of elliptical planetary nebulae I argue that about 55 per cent of all progenitors of planetary nebulae have planets around them. The planets spin up the stars when the later evolve along the red giant branch or…
According to theoretical considerations, multiplicity of hierarchical stellar systems can reach, depending on masses and orbital parameters, several hundred, while observational data confirm existence of at most septuple (seven-component)…
Many have have taken in hand to write a treatise on the Star of Bethlehem, particularly on Kepler's explanation as a stellar birth, triggered by Mars joining a great conjunction (a meeting of Jupiter and Saturn), as he observed it in…
Stars originate from the dense interstellar medium, which exhibits filamentary structure to scales of $\sim 1$ kpc in galaxies like our Milky Way. We explore quantitatively how much resulting large-scale correlation there is among different…
Using proper motion data for 894 stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) compiled by Jones & Walker in 1988, we search for binaries with apparent separations in the range 1000-5000 AU, and find an upper limit of three. Using a Monte Carlo…
We present 25 accounts of comets from 40 Australian Aboriginal communities, citing both supernatural perceptions of comets and historical accounts of bright comets. Historical and ethnographic descriptions include the Great Comets of 1843,…
The last two decades have seen the number of known exoplanets increase from a small handful to nearly 2000 known exoplanets, thousands more planet candidates, and several upcoming missions that are expected to further increase the…
The Sun is located in a low-density region of the interstellar medium partially filled with hot gas that is the likely result of several nearby supernova explosions within the last 10 Myr. Here we use astrometric data to show that part of…
Most observed extrasolar planets have masses similar to, but orbits very different from, the gas giants of our solar system. Many are much closer to their parent stars than would have been expected and their orbits are often rather…
Novae and supernovae are rare astronomical events that would have had an influence on the sky-watching peoples who witnessed them. Although several bright novae/supernovae have been visible during recorded human history, there are many…