Related papers: Babylonian and Indian Astronomy: Early Connections
Two decades ago, astronomers began detecting planets orbiting stars other than our Sun, so-called exoplanets. Since that time, the rate of detections and the sensitivity to ever-smaller planets has improved dramatically with several…
In this manuscript, an overview of the accomplishments of the Indo-Belgian co-operation is presented in the current era of multi-wavelength global astronomy. About two decades ago, in the field of astronomy and astrophysics, academicians…
The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for…
The origin and long-term evolution of Saturn's rings is still an unsolved problem in modern planetary science. In this chapter we review the current state of our knowledge on this long-standing question for the main rings (A, Cassini…
Despite the extensive amount of scholarly work done on Indian mathematics in the last 200 years, the conditions under which it originated and evolved is still not clear. Often, one reads the ancient texts with the present concepts and…
Understanding the origin and long-term evolution of the Solar System is a fundamental goal of planetary science and astrophysics. This chapter describes our current understanding of the key processes that shaped our planetary system,…
The solar system started to form about 4.56 Gyr ago and despite the long intervening time span, there still exist several clues about its formation. The three major sources for this information are meteorites, the present solar system…
The fields of occultation and microlensing are linked historically. Early this century, occultation of the Sun by the Moon allowed the apparent positions of background stars projected near the limb of the Sun to be measured and compared…
We examine in detail 15 Babylonian observations of lunar appulses and occultations made between 80 and 419 BC for the purpose of setting useful limits on Earth's clock error, as quantified by $\Delta$T, the difference between Terrestrial…
The study of stellar structure and evolution is one of the main building blocks of astrophysics, and the Sun has an importance both as the star that is most amenable to detailed study and as the star that has by far the biggest impact on…
The history of astrometry, the branch of astronomy dealing with the positions of celestial objects, is a lengthy and complex chronicle, having its origins in the earliest records of astronomical observations more than two thousand years…
Astronomy and Astrophysics is an observational science dealing with celestial objects. Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) is one of the premier institutions in astronomy and astrophysics and has contributed…
During the first few centuries CE, the centre of the known world gradually shifted from Alexandria to Constantinople. Combined with a societal shift from pagan beliefs to Christian doctrines, Antiquity gave way to the Byzantine era. While…
Galileo Galilei believed that stars were distant suns whose sizes, measured via his telescope, were a direct indication of distance -- fainter stars (appearing smaller in the telescope) were farther away than brighter ones. Galileo argued…
This paper shows that characteristic features of Puranic cosmology, such as alternating cosmic continents and oceans of successively doubling areas, can be traced to Vedic texts. The Rigveda speaks of seven regions of the universe, and…
In the last two decades, Bayesian inference has become commonplace in astronomy. At the same time, the choice of algorithms, terminology, notation, and interpretation of Bayesian inference varies from one sub-field of astronomy to the next,…
The Astronomical Diaries from Babylonia (ADB) are an excellent source of information of natural phenomena, including astronomical ones, in pre-Christ era because it contains the record of highly continuous and systematic observations. In…
The possible discovery of astronomical effects due to precession - such as the shift in the declination of heliacal raising of bright stars or the precession of the equinoxes - is reviewed for various ancient cultures in the world. Although…
"El Cielo de Salamanca" ("The Sky of Salamanca") is a quarter-sphere-shaped vault 8.70 metres in diameter. It was painted sometime between 1480 and 1493 and shows five zodiacal constellations, three boreal and six austral. The Sun and…
We use Indian temperature data of more than 100 years to study the influence of solar activity on climate. We study the Sun-climate relationship by averaging solar and climate data at various time scales; decadal, solar activity and solar…