Related papers: The size of the Sun
The measurement of the Sun's diameter has been first tackled by the Greek astronomers from a geometric point of view. Their estimation of ~1800", although incorrect, was not truly called into question for several centuries. The first…
The high accuracy reached by solar limb observations, by helioseismic measurements and by Standard Solar Models (SSMs) calculations suggests that general relativity corrections are included when discussing the solar radius. The Allen value…
The size of the diameter of the Sun has been debated for a very long time. First tackled by the Greek astronomers from a geometric point of view, an estimate, although incorrect, has been determined, not truly called into question for…
According to an ancient Indian text (c. 1700 BC?), the heavens are 1000 earth diameters away from the earth. Other texts took the sun to be halfway to the heavens, so this suggests a distance of the sun about 500 earth diameters from the…
Solar radius measurements and their variations -- if any -- are a difficult problem that has vexed researchers for decades. In this paper, we have attempted to clarify the various ways of expressing the definition ''solar diameter'', from a…
The Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) aboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory observed the transits of Mercury on 2003 May 7 and 2006 November 8. Contact times between Mercury and the solar limb have been used since the 17th century to…
The balloon-borne Solar Disk Sextant (SDS) experiment has measured the angular size of the Sun on seven occasions spanning the years 1992 to 2011. The solar half-diameter -- observed in a 100-nm wide passband centred at 615 nm -- is found…
Two methods are used to observationally determine the solar radius: One is the observation of the intensity profile at the limb, the other one uses f-mode frequencies to derive a 'seismic' solar radius which is then corrected to optical…
The Sun shrinks during solar maximum and regrows during solar minimum by a few kilometers. Here, we observe, for the first time, that the solar radius variation shows planetary relationship. This suggests that some remote planetary links…
It is shown how repeated observations of the sunset from various points up a tall building can be used to determine the Earth's radius. The same observations can also be used, at some latitudes, to deduce an approximate value for the amount…
The solar diameter changes or not? Whatever will be the answer the methods used for its measurements are more and more challenging, and facing new astrophysical and optical problems since the required space resolution is of astrometric…
Solar astrometry deals with the accurate measumerent of the solar diameter, and in general with the measurement of the shape of the Sun. During the last decades several techniques have been developed to monitor the radius and the irradiance…
With only five photographs of the Sun at different dates we show that the mass of Sun can be calculated by using a telescope, a camera, and the Kepler's third law. With these photographs we are able to calculate the distance between Sun and…
A sunset over the sea surface offers the possibility to chronometrate a solar transit across the horizon. The vertical solar diameter is proportional to the duration of the sunset, the cosine of the azimuth and the cosine of the latitude of…
ALMA will open a new chapter in the study of the Sun by providing a leap in spatial resolution and sensitivity compared to currently available mm wave- length observations. In preparation of ALMA, we have carried out a large number of…
The variation of the solar diameter is the subject of hot debates due to the possible effect on Earth climate and also due to different interpretations of long period solar variabilities, including the total solar irradiance. We shortly…
The visible diameter of Sun oscilates with a period of 160 min. The same type of periodicity is also found in a huge number of solar radiation parameters. To elucidate the origin of these longitudinal radial pulsations we have used the…
The new generation of ground-based, large-aperture solar telescopes promises to significantly increase our capabilities to understand the many basic phenomena taking place in the Sun at all atmospheric layers and how they relate to each…
The questions whether the Sun shrinks with the solar activity and what causes this have been a subject of debate. Helioseismology provides means to measure with high precision the radial displacement of subsurface layers, co-called "seismic…
The Sun emits radiation at several wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. In the optical band, the solar radius is 695,700 km and this is what defines the photosphere, the visible surface of the Sun. However, as the altitude…