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17002 results

Page 189 of 851

  • Chapter 3 - Place, time, and motion

  • Frederick R. Chromey, Vassar College, New York
  • Book:
    To Measure the Sky
    Published online:
    05 February 2019
    Print publication:
    20 October 2016, pp 59-96

  • Summary

    Where is Mars? The center of our Galaxy? The brightest X-ray source? Where, indeed, are we? Astronomers have always needed to locate objects and events in space. As our science evolves, it demands ever more exact locations. For example, an astronomer discovers, with an X-ray telescope, a source that flashes on and off with a curious rhythm. Is this source a planet, a star, or the core of a galaxy? The exact position for the X-ray source might be the only way to identify its otherwise unremarkable optical or radio counterpart. Astronomers need to know where things are.

  • Chapter 4 - Names, catalogs, and databases

  • Frederick R. Chromey, Vassar College, New York
  • Book:
    To Measure the Sky
    Published online:
    05 February 2019
    Print publication:
    20 October 2016, pp 97-112

  • Summary

    The names of astronomical objects bear traces of the history of astronomy – a history that starts with the mythological interpretation of the sky lingering in constellation names, and that continues to an era when comets are named after spacecraft and quasars after radio telescopes. As discoveries accumulate, so too do the names. As the number of objects of interest has risen to the hundreds of millions, tracking their identities and aliases has inflated to a daunting enterprise, made tractable only by the use of worldwide computer networks and meta-database software. In this chapter we introduce strategies for identifying a particular celestial object, but more importantly, introduce the methods for discovering what is known about it.

  • Chapter 5 - Optics for astronomy

  • Frederick R. Chromey, Vassar College, New York
  • Book:
    To Measure the Sky
    Published online:
    05 February 2019
    Print publication:
    20 October 2016, pp 113-149

  • Summary

    Certainly Bacon’s judgment that optics is the gateway to other sciences is particularly true of astronomy, since virtually all astronomical information arrives in the form of light. We devote the next two chapters to how astronomers utilize the sweetness and beauty of optical science. This chapter introduces the fundamentals.

  • Chapter 7 - Matter and light

  • Frederick R. Chromey, Vassar College, New York
  • Book:
    To Measure the Sky
    Published online:
    05 February 2019
    Print publication:
    20 October 2016, pp 193-231

  • Summary

    Chapter 1 introduced the situations that produce line and continuous spectra as summarized by Kirchhoff’s laws of spectrum analysis. This chapter descends to the microscopic level to examine the interaction between photons and atoms. We show how the quantum mechanical view accounts for Kirchhoff’s laws, and how atomic and molecular structure determines the line spectra of gases.

  • Chapter 9 - Digital images from arrays

  • Frederick R. Chromey, Vassar College, New York
  • Book:
    To Measure the Sky
    Published online:
    05 February 2019
    Print publication:
    20 October 2016, pp 271-315

  • Summary

    Astronomers normally present the output of a sensor array in the form of a digital image, a picture, but a mathematical picture. One appealing characteristic of a digital image is that the astronomer can readily subject it to mathematical manipulation to extract information.

Introduction to Modern Magnetohydrodynamics
  • Sébastien Galtier
  • Published online:
    13 October 2016
    Print publication:
    06 October 2016
  • Ninety-nine percent of ordinary matter in the Universe is in the form of ionized fluids, or plasmas. The study of the magnetic properties of such electrically conducting fluids, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), has become a central theory in astrophysics, as well as in areas such as engineering and geophysics. This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to MHD and its recent applications, in nature and in laboratory plasmas; from the machinery of the Sun and galaxies, to the cooling of nuclear reactors and the geodynamo. It exposes advanced undergraduate and graduate students to both classical and modern concepts, making them aware of current research and the ever-widening scope of MHD. Rigorous derivations within the text, supplemented by over 100 illustrations and followed by exercises and worked solutions at the end of each chapter, provide an engaging and practical introduction to the subject and an accessible route into this wide-ranging field.

Page 189 of 851