Related papers: Scintillation Caustics in Planetary Occultation Li…
In quasars which are lensed by galaxies, the point-like images sometimes show sharp and uncorrelated brightness variations (microlensing). These brightness changes are associated with the innermost region of the quasar passing through a…
Visibility scintillation resulting from wave propagation through the turbulent ionosphere can be an important sources of noise at low radio frequencies ($\nu\lesssim 200$ MHz). Many low frequency experiments are underway to detect the power…
We derive analytic, closed form, numerically stable solutions for the total flux received from a spherical planet, moon or star during an occultation if the specific intensity map of the body is expressed as a sum of spherical harmonics.…
A standard method to study the mass distribution in galaxy clusters is through strong lensing of background galaxies in which the positions of multiple images of the same source constrain the surface mass distribution of the cluster.…
Aims: Stars twinkle because their light propagates through the atmosphere. The same phenomenon is expected at a longer time scale when the light of remote stars crosses an interstellar molecular cloud, but it has never been observed at…
We study the light scattering by localized quasi planar excitations of a Cholesteric Liquid Crystal known as spherulites. Due to the anisotropic optical properties of the medium and the peculiar shape of the excitations, we quantitatively…
Fourier transform power spectra of azimuthal scans of the optical structure of M33 are evaluated for B, V, and R passbands and fit to fractal models of continuum emission with superposed star formation. Power spectra are also determined for…
We have carried out long-term (14 years) V and R photometric monitoring of 12 carbon-rich proto-planetary nebulae. The light and color curves display variability in all of them. The light curves are complex and suggest multiple periods,…
Fast rotating cool stars are characterised by high magnetic activity levels and frequently show dark spots up to polar latitudes. Their distinctive surface distributions of magnetic flux are investigated in the context of the solar-stellar…
Though the bulk of the observed optical flux from the discs of intermediate-redshift lensed quasars is formed well outside the region of strong relativistic boosting and light-bending, relativistic effects have important influence on…
WASP-33 is one of the few $\delta$ Sct stars with a known planetary companion. By analyzing the stellar oscillations, we search for possible star-planet interactions in the pattern of the pulsation. We made use of the Transit and Light…
It is shown that the light scattered by a finite 2D crystal strip in the region of an exciton resonance should display strong backscattering. This phenomenon is related to the exciton reflection from the edge of the strip.
Examination of emission lines in high-velocity resolution optical spectra of the Orion Nebula confirms that the velocity component on the red wing of the main ionization front emission line is due to backscattering in the Photon Dominated…
Three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic simulations of shell oxygen burning (Meakin and Arnett, 2007b) exhibit bursty, recurrent fluctuations in turbulent kinetic energy. These are shown to be due to a general instability of the convective…
The diffraction effects on gravitational waves propagating through a stellar cluster are analyzed in the relevant approximation of Fresnel diffraction limit. We find that a gravitational wave scintillation effect - similar to the radio…
Enhanced fluctuations and correlations have been observed in the phase transitions of many systems. Their appearance at the predicted QCD phase transition (especially near the expected critical point) may provide insight into the nature of…
It was recently suggested by Boldyrev & Gwinn that the characteristics of radio scintillations from distant pulsars are best understood if the interstellar electron-density fluctuations that cause the time broadening of the radio pulses…
We consider the effect of rapid rotation on the light curves of neutron stars with hot polar caps. For $P \approx 3$ms spin periods, the pulse fractions can be as much as an order of magnitude larger than with simple slowly-rotating…
We address the general problem of the excitation spectrum for light coupled to scatterers having quantum fluctuating positions around the sites of a periodic lattice. In addition to providing an imaginary part to the spectrum, we show that…
The remarkable rapid variations in radio flux density and polarization of the quasar PKS 0405-385 observed in 1996 are subject to a correlation analysis, from which characteristic time scales and amplitudes are derived. The variations are…