Related papers: Where was Mean Solar Time first adopted?
We analyze large scale (N~10000) time use surveys in United States, Spain, Italy, France and Great Britain to ascertain seasonal variations in the sleep/wake cycle and the labor cycle after daylight saving time -- summer time arrangements…
The page written by the astronomer Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729) and containing the data of the 1701 winter solstice observed at Santa Maria degli Angeli is presented for the first time in figure 2 and widely discussed along this paper.…
Soon after Einstein's calculation of the effect of the Sun's gravitational field on the propagation of light in 1911, astronomers around the world tried to measure and verify the value. If the first attempts in Brazil in 1912 or Imperial…
The engineering of solar power applications, such as photovoltaic energy (PV) or thermal solar energy requires the knowledge of the solar resource available for the solar energy system. This solar resource is generally obtained from…
The interest on the solar diameter variations has been primary since the scientific revolution for different reasons: first the elliptical orbits found by Kepler in 1609 was confirmed in the case of the Earth, and after the intrinsic solar…
Reports from the 2nd and 3rd Century AD attribute the first measurement of the angular size of the Sun to Thales of Miletus, in the 6th Century BC. Cleomedes, also in the 2nd Century AD, described a method to perform the measurement, based…
In 1911 Einstein proposed that light-bending by the Sun's gravitational field could be measured during a total solar eclipse. The first opportunity in which this measurement would be tried, was during the total solar eclipse of October 10,…
The temperatures in large parts of Europe have been record high during the meteorological autumn of 2006. Compared to 1961-1990, the 2m temperature was more than three degrees Celsius above normal from the North side of the Alps to southern…
The Swiss Federal Observatory, which had been founded in 1863 by Rudolf Wolf, was dissolved in connection with the retirement of Max Waldmeier in 1979. The determination of the Zurich sunpot number, which had been a cornerstone activity of…
The Sun has been observed through a telescope for four centuries. However, its study made a prodigious leap at the end of the nineteenth century with the appearance of photography and spectroscopy, then at the beginning of the following…
The technological discoveries and developments since dawn of civilization that resulted in the modern wristwatch are linked to the evolution of Science itself. A history of over 6000 years filled with amazing technical prowess since the…
Previous estimates of the annual mean surface temperature of Jupiter's moon, Europa, neglected the effect of the eccentricity of Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, the effect of the emissivity and heat capacity of Europa's ice, the effect of…
The variation of total solar irradiance (TSI) has been measured since 1978 and that of the spectral irradiance for an even shorter amount of time. Semi-empirical models are now available that reproduce over 80% of the measured irradiance…
The idea of a planetary origin for the solar cycle dates back to the nineteenth century. Despite unsurmounted problems, it is still advocated by some. Stefani, Giesecke, and Weier (2019) thus recently proposed a scenario based on this idea.…
A long-term decrease in downward surface solar radiation from the 1950s to the 1980s ("global dimming") followed by a multi-decadal increase up to the present ("brightening") have been detected in many regions worldwide. In addition, some…
The solar diameter has been monitored at the Royal Observatory of the Spanish Navy (today the Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada: ROA) almost continuously since its creation in 1753 (i.e. during the last quarter of a millennium).…
This paper documents the places in mainland Europe at which the sun sets latest, by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), on any given day (distortion due to differences in local standard times is ignored). In contradiction to the na\"ive…
Based on analysis of the annual averaged relative sunspot number (ASN) during 1700 -- 2009, 3 kinds of solar cycles are confirmed: the well-known 11-yr cycle (Schwabe cycle), 103-yr secular cycle (numbered as G1, G2, G3, and G4,…
There are currently a vivid debate in Spain on the time zone which should follow the country. In this context this paper analyses Time Use surveys in Spain, Italy and United Kingdom and compares data extracted from them. The paper focus on…
The McNish and Lincoln (ML) method, introduced in 1949, was one of the first attempts to produce mid-term forecasts of solar activity, up to 12 months ahead. However, it has been poorly described and evaluated in the past literature, in…