Related papers: The Moon, a disk or a sphere?
When metallic (or plasmonic) nanospheres are nearly touching, strong concentration of light can occur in the narrow gap regions. This phenomenon has a potential application in nanophotonics, biosensing and spectroscopy. The understanding of…
In this paper we explore the effectiveness of an artificial mini-magnetosphere as a potential radiation shelter for long term human space missions. Our study includes the differences that the plasma environment makes to the efficiency of…
Ion-scale magnetospheres have been observed around comets, weakly-magnetized asteroids, and localized regions on the Moon, and provide a unique environment to study kinetic-scale plasma physics, in particular in the collisionless regime. In…
The intensity and energy spectrum of energetic charged radiation in the heliosphere are significantly influenced by solar activity. This phenomenon is known as solar modulation of galactic cosmic rays. As interplanetary travel becomes a…
Earthshine observations offer a unique opportunity to study Earth as an exoplanet seen from the Moon. As the Sun-Earth-Moon geometry changes, Earth can be observed as a spatially unresolved exoplanet at different phase angles, providing…
We predict how a remote observer would see the brightness variations of giant planets similar to Jupiter and Saturn as they orbit their central stars. We model the geometry of Jupiter, Saturn and Saturn's rings for varying orbital and…
Whereas a variation of the solar luminosity, L, will inevitably cause a similar change of the total solar irradiance, S, the opposite is not true. In fact, the bulk of the days to months variations of S can be explained entirely in terms of…
Advanced diffractive films may afford advantages over passive reflective surfaces for a variety space missions that use solar or laser in-space propulsion. Three cases are compared: Sun-facing diffractive sails, Littrow diffraction…
We provide a strengthening of Jordan separation, to the setting of maps from a compact topological space X into a sphere, where the source space X is not necessarily a codimension one sphere, and the map is not necessarily injective.
We investigate the system constituted by a polarizable atom near a nanosphere under the influence of an external electrostatic field, showing that the attractive dispersive force between them can be overcome by the electrostatic…
There are many indications that anthropogenic global warming poses a serious threat to our civilization and its ecological support systems. Ideally this problem will be overcome by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Various space-based…
We investigate the possibility to find evidence for planets in circumstellar disks by infrared and submillimeter interferometry. We present simulations of a circumstellar disk around a solar-type star with an embedded planet of 1 Jupiter…
Cooperative scattering of light by an extended object such as an atomic ensemble or a dielectric sphere is fundamentally different from scattering from many point-like scatterers such as single atoms. Homogeneous distributions tend to…
Graphite is an example of a layered material that can be bent to form fullerenes which promise important applications in electronic nanodevices. The spheroidal geometry of a slightly elliptically deformed sphere was used as a possible…
The Earth--Moon system has been experiencing impacts from asteroids and comets for billions of years. The Moon, as an airless body, has preserved a distinct record of these events in form of impact craters and ejecta deposits, offering…
Light, or electromagnetic radiation, is well known to possess momentum, and the exchange of this momentum with a reflecting surface leads to radiation pressure. More often than not, it is the radiation pressure generated by a plane wave…
We investigate, by numerical simulations, the photometric signature of magnetic flux tubes in the solar photosphere. We show that the observed contrast profiles are determined not only by the physical properties of the tube and its…
Coherent interaction of solar neutrino with the moon and its implication are investigated. We solve the Dirac equation with the moon potential and show that a phase shift of the neutrino wave function becomes almost one unit if the neutrino…
Second part of a didactic sequence of activities on some topics of Astronomy, related mainly with the real shape of the Earth, the gravitational interactions between our planet and other celestial bodies, and the resulting movement of the…
Space-based telescopes offer unparalleled opportunities for characterising exoplanets, Solar System bodies and stellar objects. However, observatories in low Earth orbits (e.g. Hubble, CHEOPS, Twinkle and an ever increasing number of…