Related papers: The Olbers Conjecture, Revisited
Paramount among the processes that ended the cosmic `dark ages' must have been the formation of the first generation of stars (the so-called Population III). We summarize recent progress in constraining its nature, and we discuss the basic…
The stellar haloes of galaxies can currently be studied either through observations of resolved halo stars or through surface photometry. Curiously, the two methods appear to give conflicting results, as a number of surface photometry…
OB associations are unbound groups of young stars made prominent by their bright OB members, and have long been thought to be the expanded remnants of dense star clusters. They have been important in astrophysics for over a century thanks…
The Copernican Principle (which says the Earth and sun are not unique) should have observational consequences and thus be testable. Galileo Galilei thought he could measure the true angular diameters of stars with his telescope; according…
The aim of this project is to determine the consistency of an assumed cosmological model by means of a detailed analysis of the brightness profiles of distant galaxies.Starting from the theory developed by Ellis and Perry (1979) connecting…
Europe and a number of countries in the world are investing significant amounts of public money to operate and maintain large, ground-based astronomical facilities. Even larger projects are under development to observe the faintest and most…
Convection and turbulence in stellar atmospheres have a significant effect on the emergent flux from late-type stars. The theoretical advancements in convection modelling over recent years have proved challenging for the observers to obtain…
Some time ago Wastlund reformulated the Basel problem in terms of a physical system using the proportionality of the apparent brightness of a star to the inverse square of its distance. Inspired by this approach, we give another physical…
The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) is one of the most productive and influential photometric sky surveys in the history of observational astronomy. Originally designed to detect dark matter through gravitational…
The answers to fundamental science questions in astrophysics, ranging from the history of the expansion of the universe to the sizes of nearby stars, hinge on our ability to make precise measurements of diverse astronomical objects. As our…
The stellar astronomy has always been considered the fundamental source of knowledge about the basic building blocks of the universe - the stars. It has proved correctness of many physical theories - like e.g. the idea of nuclear fusion in…
Physical properties of stars such as luminosity, surface temperature, distance, or mass are measured from observations. These physical properties are of paramount importance to understand how stars are born, live, and die in the universe…
We describe how cosmology has converged towards a beautiful model of the Universe: the Big Bang Universe. We praise this model, but show there is a dark side to it. This dark side is usually called ``the cosmological problems'': a set of…
The cosmic inflation hypothesis, its relation to fundamental theory on the beginning of the universe, and the light that both shed on how the various elements and their relative amounts came into existence. The fundamental factors…
The determination of photospheric abundances in late-type stars from spectroscopic observations is a well-established field, built on solid theoretical foundations. Improving those foundations to refine the accuracy of the inferred…
There are about 6000 stars, that can be seen with the naked eye and have been observed for centuries for various purposes. More modern investigations using advanced telescopes show that our Milky Way, a quite common galaxy, consists of…
Our view on the deep universe has been so far biased towards optically bright galaxies. Now, the measurement of the Cosmic Infrared Background in FIRAS and DIRBE residuals, and the observations of FIR/submm sources by the ISOPHOT and SCUBA…
During the last century, with the development of modern physics in such diverse fields as thermodynamics, statistical physics, and nuclear and particle physics, the basic principles of the evolution of stars have been successfully well…
The population of artificial satellites and space debris orbiting the Earth imposes non-negligible constraints on both space operations and ground-based optical and radio astronomy. The ongoing deployment of several satellite…
In a recent paper, Hawkins (1997) argues on the basis of statistical studies of double-image gravitational lenses and lens candidates that a large population of dark lenses exists and that these outnumber galaxies with more normal…