Related papers: The 1908 Tunguska Event and Bright Nights

We investigate possible reasons for the absence of historical records of the supernova of 1054 in Europe. At the same time, we search for the new evidences as well. We establish that the previously acclaimed 'Arabic' records from ibn Butlan…

Observations of a long-lasting Gamma-ray burst, one that has the brightest optical counterpart yet discovered, challenge theoretical understanding of these bursts but may enhance their usefulness as cosmic probes.

Long X-ray observations of bright Active Galactic Nuclei show that X-ray eclipses, with durations from a few hours to a few days, are rather common. This opens up a new window of opportunity in the search for signatures of relativistic…

Solar activity has been recorded as auroras or sunspots in various historical sources. These records are of much importance for investigating both long-term solar activities and extremely intense solar flares. In previous studies, they were…

Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is the supermassive black hole residing at the center of the Milky Way. It has been the main target of an extensive multiwavelength campaign we carried out in April 2007. Herein, we report the detection of a bright…

Lasting anywhere from a few milliseconds to several minutes, GRBs shine hundreds of times brighter than a typical supernova, making them briefly the brightest source of cosmic gamma-ray photons in the observable Universe. This thesis…

The past decades have witnessed a lot of progress in gravitational lensing with two main targets: stars and galaxies (with active galactic nuclei). The success is partially attributed to the continuous luminescence of these sources making…

GRB 110918A is the brightest long GRB detected by Konus-WIND during its 19 years of continuous observations and the most luminous GRB ever observed since the beginning of the cosmological era in 1997. We report on the final IPN localization…

New absolute spectrophotometry of the Kitt Peak night sky has been obtained in 2009/10, which we compare to previously published data obtained in 1988 and 1999, allowing us to look for changes over the past two decades. A comparison of the…

BATSE, Ulysses, and TGRS and KONUS on WIND detected four gamma-ray events within 1.8 days during 1996 October 27-29, consistent with coming from the same location on the sky. We assess the evidence that these events may be due to a series…

For a few seconds a gamma-ray burst (GRB) becomes the brightest object in the Universe, over-shining the rest of the Universe combined! Clearly this reflects extreme conditions that are fascinating and worth exploring. The recent discovery…

The radio skies remain mostly unobserved when it comes to transient phenomena. The direct detection of gravitational waves will mark a major milestone of modern astronomy, as an entirely new window will open on the universe. Two apparently…

GRB 190829A at z=0.0785 is the fourth closest long GRB ever detected by the Neil Gehrels Swift observatory, and the third confirmed case with a very high energy component. We present our multi-wavelength analysis of this rare event,…

11 transient bright flashes were detected in Jupiter's atmosphere using the UVS instrument on the Juno spacecraft. These bright flashes are only observed in a single spin of the spacecraft and their brightness decays exponentially with…

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), associated with the collapse of massive stars or the collisions of compact objects, are the most luminous events in our universe. However, there is still much to learn about the nature of the relativistic jets…

We present the site quality of the Zadko Observatory, focusing on the brightness of the sky and the effects of the weather on the efficiency of the Observatory. We discuss these effects and their consequences for the scientific goals of the…

The data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory are analyzed to search for coincidences between the arrival directions of high-energy cosmic rays and the positions in the sky of astrophysical transients. Special attention is directed…

We find agreement between models of atmospheric chemistry changes from ionization for the 1908 Tunguska airburst event and nitrate enhancement in GISP2H and GISP2 ice cores, plus an unexplained ammonium spike. We then consider a candidate…

The i-band observing conditions at Dome A on the Antarctic plateau have been investigated using data acquired during 2008 with the Chinese Small Telescope ARray. The sky brightness, variations in atmospheric transparency, cloud cover, and…

Double neutron star mergers are strong sources of gravitational waves. The upcoming advanced gravitational wave detectors are expected to make the first detection of gravitational wave bursts (GWBs) associated with these sources. Proposed…