Related papers: Astronomy and the Fall of Babylon
The rich plate archive of the Asiago observatory has been searched for plates containing the symbiotic stars AS 323, Ap 3-1, CM Aql, V1413 Aql (=AS 338), V443 Her, V627 Cas (=AS 501) and V919 Sgr. The program objects have been found on 602…
Critical views are presented on some nucleo-cosmochronological questions. Progress has been made recently in the development of the 187Re-187Os cosmochronometry. From this, there is good hope for this clock to become of the highest quality…
This article provides information about the factors that necessitated the need to adjust the calendar during the time of Umar Khayyam, the method of choosing the beginning of the year, and the length of the months. It also attempts to…
By c. 3000 BC, in the late Neolithic, there had been a significant change in the way people materialized their cosmology across Scotland with the introduction of free-standing stones. These were erected almost until the end of the Bronze…
We reconsider the 680 million year old Elatina series of sedimentary laminae from South Australia that show a remarkably stable periodicity with a main period of around 12 years, which is close to the Schwabe cycle, and a second period of…
The neoclassical causal version for Newton's acausal gravitational theory explains exactly the anomalous speed-changes observed for six Earth flybys and an anomalous lunar orbital speed-change (arXiv:1105.3857v10). This article estimates…
The Euclid mission is a visionary project undertaken by the European Space Agency (ESA) to probe the universe's evolution and geometry by surveying the position and gravitational shape distortion of billions of galaxies. These observations…
The great development of astrometric accuracy since the observations by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus about 150 BC has often been displayed in diagrams showing the accuracy versus time. Two new diagrams are provided here, one for…
In this short review, we trace the evolution of inference in astronomy, highlighting key milestones rather than providing an exhaustive survey. We focus on the shift from classical optimization to Bayesian inference, the rise of…
The application of photography to astronomy was a critical step in the development of astrophysics at the end of the nineteenth century. Using custom-built photographic telescopes and objective prisms, astronomers took images of the sky on…
Nowadays the more powerful method to detect extrasolar planets is the transit method. We review the planet transits which were anticipated, searched, and the first ones which were observed all through history. Indeed transits of planets in…
Recent studies of radioisotopes in tree rings or ice cores suggest that extreme space weather events occurred in the pre-telescope age. Observational records of naked-eye sunspots and low-latitude auroras in historical documents in…
This paper outlines astrophysical issues related to the long term fate of the universe. We consider the evolution of planets, stars, stellar populations, galaxies, and the universe itself over time scales which greatly exceed the current…
In-depth analysis of eclipsing binary (EB) observational data collected for several decades can inform us about a lot of astrophysically interesting processes taking place in the systems. We have developed a wide-ranging method for the…
We present a review on the renowned solar eclipse in the Chinese book "Shujing" describing the oldest account of this kind. After balancing the arguments on the time, place, and the celestial stage, we offer a new scenario. The path of…
Recently, it has been suggested in the literature that the difference between universal and coordinated time UT1-UTC could reach a large positive value in the coming years (Agnew 2024). This would make it necessary to introduce a negative…
The planets' gravitational interaction causes rhythmic changes in Earth's orbital parameters (also called Milankovi\'c cycles), which have powerful applications in geology and astrochronology. For instance, the primary astronomical…
Conventional explanations for observations of anomalous behaviour of mechanical systems during solar eclipses are critically reviewed. These observations include the work of Allais with paraconical pendula, those of Saxl and Allen with a…
We identify a set of asteroids among Centaurs and Damocloids, that orbit contrary to the common direction of motion in the Solar System and that enter into resonance with Jupiter and Saturn. Their orbits have inclinations I >= 140 deg and…
We present an analysis of the apsidal motion and light curve parameters of 54 never-before-studied galactic Algol-type binaries. This is the first analysis of such a large sample of eccentric eclipsing binaries in our Galaxy, and has…