相关论文: Goonhilly Sparklers
This paper presents an investigation into the gravitational microlensing of quasars by stars and stellar remnants in the Milky Way. We present predictions for the all-sky microlensing optical depth, time-scale distributions and event rates…
Extreme Scattering Events are radio-wave lensing events caused by AU-sized concentrations of ionised gas. Although they were discovered more than a decade ago we still have no clear picture of the physical nature of the lenses. To…
Our initial impressions of astronomical objects was that they are inherently "static" over the course of any reasonably long observation. However, with the discovery of quasars and their scintillation in 1963-64, we learnt that there are…
Variability in gravitationally lensed quasars can be due to intrinsic fluctuations of the quasar or due to ``microlensing'' by compact objects along the line of sight. If disentangled from each other, microlens-induced variability can be…
By monitoring $10^6$ quasars one could search for lensing by stars and Massive Compact Halo Objects (Machos) out to redshifts $z\sim 4$. If Machos have a present cosmological density $\Omega_{L,0}=1\%$, then the expected event rate is…
Variability is a common characteristic of magnetically active stars. Flaring variability is usually interpreted as the observable consequence of transient magnetic reconnection processes happening in the stellar outer atmosphere. Stellar…
Observations over the last two decades have shown that a significant fraction of all flat-spectrum, extragalactic radio sources exhibit flux density variations on timescales of a day or less at frequencies of several GHz. It has been…
Extreme Scattering Events are sometimes manifest in the light-curves of compact radio-quasars at frequencies of a few GHz. These events are not understood. The model which appears to offer the best explanation requires a new population of…
Next-generation terrestrial gravitational-wave observatories will detect $\mathcal{O}(10^{5})$ signals from compact binary coalescences every year. These signals can last for several hours in the detectors' sensitivity band and they will be…
Radio pulsars have been responsible for many astonishing astrophysical and fundamental physics breakthroughs since their discovery 50 years ago. In this review I will discuss many of the highlights, most of which were only possible because…
Microlensing studies of quasars can reveal dark matter lumps over a broad mass spectrum; we highlight the importance of monitoring quasars which are seen through the halos of low-redshift galaxies. For these configurations microlensing by…
Recently, Chartas et al. (2001) detected a rapid X-ray flare in the gravitationally lensed, multiple image quasar RX J0911.4+0551. Dramatic events, such as rapid X-ray flares, are useful in providing high precision measurements of the time…
Pulsar astronomy is currently enjoying one of the most productive phases in its history. In this review, I outline some of the basic observational aspects and summarise some of the latest results of searches for pulsars in the disk of our…
Conventional techniques that measure rapid time variations are inefficient or inadequate to discover and observe rapidly pulsating astronomical sources. It is therefore conceivable that there exist some classes of objects pulsating with…
Thanks to aggressive campaigns of multi-wavelength observations of X-ray binaries in outbursts over the last decade or so, we have now reached a reasonable understanding of their radio phenomenology in response to changes in the global…
Microlensing has a unique advantage for detecting dark objects in the Milky Way, such as free-floating planets, neutron stars, and stellar-mass black holes. Most microlensing surveys focus on the Galactic bulge, where higher stellar density…
Extreme scattering events (ESEs) are distinctive fluctuations in the brightness of astronomical radio sources caused by occulting plasma lenses in the interstellar medium. The inferred plasma pressures of the lenses are $\sim 10^3$ times…
Blazars, a unique class of active galactic nuclei, exhibit highly variable emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. This variability frequently manifests as intense flaring events, sparking an ongoing debate in recent literature about…
Astronomers occasionally detect an object having unexpected shape, unexplainable photometry, or unprecedented spectra that are inconsistent with our contemporary knowledge of the universe. Upon careful assessment, many of these anomalies…
In extreme scattering events, the brightness of a compact radio source drops significantly, as light is refracted out of the line of sight by foreground plasma lenses. Despite recent efforts, the nature of these lenses has remained a…