Astronomiske observationer: observatorier, udstyr og metoder

Den 20. juli 1969 kl. 03.56 dansk tid satte Neil Armstrong som det første menneske sin fod på Månen. I denne bog med mere end 100 fotos fortæller Danmarks førerende astrofysiker, Anja C. Andersen hele den spændende historie om Jordens nærmeste nabo i rummet; kendsgerninger og konspirationsteorier, myter, fup og fakta. Frem til 1972 gennemførte NASA yderligere 5 bemandede månelandinger, og i alt 12 astronauter har betrådt Månen. Derudover har der været et utal af ubemandede månelandinger - senest den 3. januar 2019, da et kinesisk rumfartøj landede på Månens bagside. Men der er stadig meget, vi ikke ved: Hvordan er Månen opstået, og hvorfor har den kun vand på den side, der vender mod Jorden? Hvordan påvirker Månen os mennesker?

Gyldendals stjernekort er et let anvendeligt redskab til at orientere sig i stjernevrimlen. Kortet kan bruges året rundt: Den øverste plastskive drejes, således at dato og klokkeslet kommer til at stå ud for hinanden, og den aktuelle stjernehimmel for det pågældende tidspunkt fremkommer. Sammen med kortet følger en grundig vejledning, som giver eksempler på de for årstiden karakteristiske stjernebilleder. Kortet er tegnet til at kunne bruges i Danmark, men kan med god nøjagtighed anvendes i det øvrige Skandinavien.

Der sker hele tiden noget nyt og spændende inden for rumforskningen. I 2022 lykkedes det forskerholdet Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration at optage et billede af det sorte hul i Mælkevejen. James Webb Teleskopet leverer billeder af galakser, der ligger 13 milliarder lysår borte. De opdagelser, som den danske forsker Albert Sneppen har gjort omkring neutronstjerners sammenstød, kan måske bruges til at beregne universets udvidelseshastighed. I ”Det gådefulde univers” giver Danmarks mest anerkendte astrofysiker et overblik over himmelrummet fra Solsystemet og ud til de fjerneste galakser og over universets udvikling fra Big Bang frem til i dag.Universet blev skabt for 13,7 milliarder år siden. Et lysår er ca. 9,5 billioner kilometer, og afstanden til de fjerne kvasarer er 12 milliarder lysår. Når man beskæftiger sig med universet, handler det om svimlende tidshorisonter og afstande; men Anja C. Andersen formår at gøre det uoverskuelige begribeligt. Stor gavebog med fantastisk billedmateriale.

Der er ikke otte, men milliarder af planeter i Universet, og mange af dem ligger i et lunt smørhul, hvor de potentielt kan huse liv. Den opdagelse er en af de største i den moderne astronomi, og vi er kun lige begyndt at forstå, hvad der egentlig gemmer sig derude i kosmos af bizarre kloder. 'Fjerne kloder' beskriver erkendelsesrejsen, fra Giordano Bruno blev brændt på bålet i år 1600 for sin kætterske idé om uendelig mange planeter – og til konstruktionen af små satellitter, som måske kan besøge de nærmeste af disse exoplaneter og lede efter livstegn på dem. Undervejs møder vi forskerne ved fronten, som kigger hinsides solsystemet og kæmper for at besvare det ultimative spørgsmål: Er vi alene?

At stå ved en strand eller ved en åben mark en aften i september, mens solen går ned, og fuglene langsomt går til ro, er et magisk øjeblik. Vinden lægger sig, himlen får først et orange og senere et rødt skær, skygger og konturer udviskes. Og efterhånden toner de første, klare stjerner op på himlen. Langsomt dukker de op - en efter en - og pludselig myldrer det frem med stjerner.En observationsaften kan begynde - med genbesøg hos gamle himmelske bekendtskaber og måske nogle nye, som man ikke har hilst på før.Bogen giver praktiske råd til, hvordan man bedst studerer stjernehimlen, hvor de bedste dark sky-områder er, og om hvilke typer håndkikkert, der er bedst egnet.Hovedafsnittet er inddelt i årstider: sommer, efterår, vinter, sommer, og det beskrives grundigt, hvordan man bedst pejler sig frem til de enkelte stjernebilleder og galakser.

Avi Loeb, ledende astrofysiker ved Harvard University, fremlægger sin kontroversielle teori om, at vores solsystem for nylig blev besøgt af avanceret og fremmed teknologi fra en fjern stjerne. I slutningen af 2017 fik nogle forskere på et observatorium i Hawaii øje på et objekt, der kom flyvende gennem vores indre solsystem og bevægede sig så hurtigt, at det nødvendigvis måtte stamme fra en anden stjerne. Avi Loeb påviste, at det ikke kunne være en asteroide. Objektet bevægede sig ganske enkelt for hurtigt og langs en underlig bane – og det forsvandt sporløst. Bogen er en tankevækkende rejse til videnskabens og den menneskelige forestillingsevnes yderste grænser.

Hvad er rummet? Hvor stort er det? Hvor kommer det fra? Og hvad ved vi om det? Den folkekære Sigurd Barrett, hvis bogsalg har rundet 1 million eksemplarer, tager i sin seneste udgivelse børn og voksne med ud i rummet.I samarbejde med DTU Space og andre førende rumforskere har Sigurd Barrett skrevet denne fascinerende bog om rummet og rumfart. Få historien om planeterne i vores solsystem, om Solen og Månen, om stjernerne, om galakserne og om hele det utrolige univers, vi er en del af.Hvad er en komet? Hvad er en asteroide? Og hvordan gik det til, da man første gang landede på Månen?I 16 kapitler fortæller Sigurd på sin vanlige finurlige måde om det store uendelige rum, og hvordan vi mennesker gennem tiderne har udforsket det. Kom med på en eventyrlig rejse ud i det eventyrlige univers, og syng med på de 16 nye sange, som Sigurd Barrett og Eskild Dohn har skrevet til kapitlerne.I bogen findes QR koder til sangene og også til 16 helt nye film, hvor Sigurd og ”Einstein” fortæller børn og voksne om rummet og viser nogle af de fantastiske billeder og film, der gennem tiderne er optaget i rummet. Bogen er rigt illustreret af Jørgen Eivind Hansen og henvender sig til alle nysgerrige læsere mellem 5 og 100 år

Denne bog er familiens nye lege- og aktivitetsbog, som står på ryggen af Sigurd Barretts nye fyrtårnsprojekt Sigurd fortæller om rummet. Bogen er propfyldt med sjove og lærerige lege, aktiviteter og opgaver, som alle kan lave derhjemme, og som gør os klogere på det uendelige rum.

Previously dependent on Europe for scientific knowledge, the United States came into its own during the nineteenth century. A prime example of this is evident in the establishment of the Cincinnati Observatory, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Funded by the citizenry of that city, it was initiated, with ceremony, by the oration by former President John Quincy Adams, at the laying of the cornerstone in 1843.In this book, you will read about the Cincinnati Observatory's most notable contributions, big and small, that were made over the course of its years in existence. You will learn about the Observatory's role in primitive weather forecasting, star cataloging, and even advancements it helped to create during World War II. Now known as the Cincinnati Observatory Center, it is a functional observatory and a dedicated center of astronomy education for all ages. It continues to contribute a rich cultural and scientific history to its community and nation.

This book highlights the basic theories and technical principles of the synthetic aperture radar (SAR), aiming to bridge theories and applications for readers. Supported by the practical experience of the author's dedicated research, this book also constructs the SAR theoretical system from multiple perspectives.The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a weather-independent microwave remote sensing device that involves a number of multidisciplinary fields such as signal processing and image information processing. Written by experts in remote sensing and signal processing, the book explains the signal echo modeling, imaging principles and algorithms, image quality control methods, and image applications. Readers are provided with concise descriptions of commonly used imaging algorithms for SAR in multiple regimes, modes, and applications, including the Range Doppler Algorithm (RDA) and the Frequency Scaling Algorithm (FSA). Continuous wave/pulse regime SAR technology, inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) technology, digital beam forming (DBF), interferometry, and moving target detection methods are discussed in detail.The book is a must-read and comprehensive reference for researchers and engineers engaged in the R&D of the SAR and for graduate students interested in the field.

This volume gives a comprehensive, up-to-date review of cosmic masers as presented at IAU Symposium 380, the sixth international maser symposium. It describes time-domain and multiwavelength studies of maser sources via large observing facilities and networks, and discusses ongoing and future projects relevant to maser science.

Cosmology's journey to the present day has been a long one. This book outlines the latest research on modern cosmology and related topics from world-class experts. Through it, readers will learn how multi-disciplinary approaches and technologies are used to search the unknown and how we arrived at the knowledge used and assumptions made by cosmologists today. The book is organized into four parts, each exploring a theme that has troubled humankind for centuries. Since the dawn of time, looking at the sky, humans have tried to understand their origin, the laws governing it, and what influence it all has on human life. In most ancient civilizations, astronomers embodied the power of knowledge. This knowledge was not compartmentalized, and scientists often found philosophical implications within their quests, many of which destroyed the borders between the natural sciences. Even now, as observers and scientists continue to use conjecture to generate theoretical assumptions and laws that then have to be confirmed experimentally, said theoretical and experimental searches are being linked to philosophical thinking and artistic representation, as they were up until the 18th century. This multi-disciplinary book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the fields of Astronomy, Cosmology or Physics.

This book provides an introduction to classical celestial mechanics. It is based on lectures delivered by the authors over many years at both Padua University (MC) and V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (EB). The book aims to provide a mathematical description of the gravitational interaction of celestial bodies. The approach to the problem is purely formal. It allows the authors to write equations of motion and solve them to the greatest degree possible, either exactly or by approximate techniques, when there is no other way. The results obtained provide predictions that can be compared with the observations. Five chapters are supplemented by appendices that review certain mathematical tools, deepen some questions (so as not to interrupt the logic of the mainframe with heavy technicalities), give some examples, and provide an overview of special functions useful here, as well as in many other fields of physics. The authors also present the original investigation of torus potential. This book is aimed at senior undergraduate students of physics or astrophysics, as well as graduate students undertaking a master's degree or Ph.D.

This symposium honors the contributions of Charlotte Moore Sitterly as a pioneer of spectroscopy, and astronomical spectroscopy in particular. The need for precise and accurate laboratory data in astrophysics has not diminished. Every time better spectrographs are built or new wavelength domains explored, we find critical information missing that is needed for analyses to derive abundances or to compare models of stars and planets to observations, in order to more fully understand the universe that we observe. IAU Symposium 371 encompassed nearly all the science themes that the IAU covers, from near to far in the universe, and at all wavelengths. But it concerned more than lab work in and of itself and brought together laboratory astrophysicists with the people who use that information, to learn about current advances and limitations, and future needs. A broad spectrum of the IAU's membership can benefit from these proceedings.

This book presents novel observational evidence toward detecting and characterizing the products of massive, interacting binary stars. As a majority of massive stars are born in close binary systems, a large number of so-called massive binary interaction products are predicted to exist; however, few have been identified so far. Based on observations with the largest telescopes around the world, equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation, this book helps to remedy this situation. In her outstanding PhD-thesis Julia Bodensteiner identifies a new class of post-interaction binaries in a short-lived phase just briefly after the initially more massive star has been stripped of part of its envelope. She further provides new evidence for the Be phenomenon to largely result from binary interactions. These results represented a new and testable prediction for the evolution of these stars and opened up a new way forward for identifying hundreds of post-interaction products.Finally, using the MUSE integral field spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope in Chile, the author presents a novel spectroscopic campaign focusing on the 40 Myr-old star cluster NGC 330 in the Small Magellanic Clouds. Combined with photometric observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the MUSE data allow to characterize the entire massive star population of NGC 330, revealing their multiplicity properties and rotational velocities and providing unique observational constraints on their (binary) evolution history. This is made possible by the developments of novel numerical methods allowing to extract star spectra from the MUSE integral field spectroscopic data and to characterize their properties by the simultaneous comparison of MUSE spectroscopy and Hubble photometry with atmospheric models.This book is a partly re-written version of the author's thesis offering a highly readable coherent text presenting not only new insights into the properties of binary interaction products but also giving students an excellent introduction into the field.

This book is a comprehensive technical treatise on binoculars as visual optical instruments. The author begins by discussing the function of binoculars and the properties of human visual perception. Theoretical models for the synthesis of binoculars and the complex interplay of the different components of binoculars are described. Subsequently, the performance limits, as experienced by the observer in a variety of external conditions, are derived. In the concluding section, the book takes the reader outdoors, where they learn to evaluate the properties and limitations of their binoculars in the field, and to recognize possible problems that may be due to manufacturing errors or accidental damages. Thus, a level of knowledge is provided that will enable the reader to fully exploit the capacities of their binoculars. This book is written for those who work professionally with binoculars and are technically interested, but it is equally useful for professional staff working in the optical industry and the distribution of optical instruments. It includes recent discoveries and is easily accessible to anyone who is seriously interested in learning about binocular function. High school level math is useful to understand the derivations, but not needed to comprehend the results, which are discussed and displayed graphically.

This book provides a detailed biographical account of the industrious late nineteenth-century astronomer William Frederick Denning who, in later life, rose to be a celebrated public figure and a highly respected amateur astronomer. The book also examines Denning¿s many contributions to the astronomy of his time.As an indomitable promotor of amateur astronomy, Denning was closely involved in the formation of the short-lived, but historically pivotal, Observational Astronomy Society (OAS) in 1869. Readers will learn about the origins and the observational programs initiated by the OAS, and the author also presents a series of biographical sketches of its most industrious members. Furthermore, by examining Denning¿s letters and publications, the author shows how he helped to nurture the growth of amateur astronomy, also teaching amateur observers how to make their efforts scientifically useful.A stalwart observer and enthusiast himself, Denning was a key player in the development of meteor astronomy in England, culminating in his being invited, in 1922, to be the first President of Commission 22 (meteors, meteorites and interplanetary dust) of the newly formed International Astronomical Union. The text follows the development and rapid growth of meteor astronomy during the nineteenth century, focusing upon the key observations and important theoretical advances. In addition, it pays tribute to pioneering practitioners, who, along with Denning, set out to unravel the story and secrets of the shooting stars.While not an openly forthright or strident figure, Denning, at the height of his career, became embroiled in two public and controversial issues. The first related to his pseudo-scientific theory of optical blurring, and his belief that large-aperture telescopes performed less efficiently than smaller-aperture telescopes when used in the study of planetary disks. The second concerned the mysterious issue of stationary meteor shower radiants¿an apparent observational reduction that was completely at odds with both the standard theories of gravitational dynamics and the generally accepted notion of meteoroid stream structure. The book explores these two controversies and uses them to examine Denning¿s outlook on scientific methodology.

This thesis addresses the feasibility of the production of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays in starburst galaxies and active galactic nuclei. These astrophysical objects were theoretically proposed as candidate sources a long time ago. Nevertheless, the interest in them has been recently renewed due to the observational data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array. In this work, a comprehensive review of the current status of the research on cosmic rays accelerators is provided, along with a summary of the principal concepts needed to connect these relativistic particles with electromagnetic and neutrino observations in the multi-messenger era. On one hand, the hypothesis of accelerating particles with energies above 10' eV in starburst superwinds is carefully revisited, taking into account the constraints imposed by the most recent electromagnetic observations. On the other hand, an alternative new model for the gamma emission of the nearby active galaxy NGC 1068 is presented. The implications of the results of these studies are discussed in terms of the contemporary observatories and prospects for future experiments are offered.

Multi-messenger science has a long history in solar astronomy, as direct measures of "in-situ" particles emanating from the Sun, like the solar wind, have long been used alongside remote observations to shape our understanding of the heliosphere. Still, the recent advent of several major observational facilities, such as Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter, and the Inouye Solar Telescope, among many others, is now heralding an exciting new era of scientific opportunities within multi-messenger solar physics. This volume collects the proceedings of IAU Symposium 372 held during the XXXIst IAU General Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea. Its main goal is to highlight how these facilities can address many of the pressing questions facing contemporary solar physics, with a special emphasis on their coordinated operation and the resulting synergies. Graduate students and researchers in solar physics will benefit from the many new results presented within.

Blazars, the most extreme active galactic nuclei with powerful relativistic jets extending out to kiloparsecs from their central engine, are among the most intriguing and consistently bright objects in the observable Universe. Understanding how they form and shine has been a cumbersome endeavor since their discovery in the 1960s, with several fundamental questions remaining open to this day. The 2020s mark the beginning of a new era of large-scale surveys, multimessenger astrophysics, high-energy polarization, and extreme angular resolution, setting the ideal stage to study astrophysical jets. IAU Symposium 375 was the first IAU symposium to take place in Nepal. It brought together experts from all aspects of the blazar community to facilitate the building of new collaborative efforts to take advantage of the wealth of incoming data that will help provide answers to long-standing questions. It also supported local efforts to promote astrophysics and astrophysical research in Nepal.

Near-infrared astronomy has become one of the most rapidly developing branches in modern astrophysics. Innovative observing techniques, near-infrared detectors with quantum efficiencies in excess of 90%, highly specialised instruments as well as advanced data reduction techniques have allowed major breakthroughs in various areas like exoplanets, star-forming regions, the supermassive black hole in the Galactic center, and the high-redshift Universe.In this book, the reader will be introduced to the basic concepts of how to prepare near-infrared observations with maximized scientific return. Equal weight is given to all aspects of the data reduction for both - imaging and spectroscopy. Information is also provided on the state of the art instrumentation available and planned, on detector technology or the physics of the atmosphere, all of which influence the preparation and execution of observations and data reduction techniques. The beginner but also the expert will find a lot of information in compact form which is otherwise widely dispersed across the internet or other sources.

This Faraday Discussion volume brings together internationally leading experimental and theoretical scientists from across the fields of astronomy, chemistry, and physics to explore and exchange their ideas about our chemical understanding of the universe.

This book tells the comprehensive history of cosmography from the 15th Century Age of Discovery onward. During this time, cosmography¿a science that combined geography and astronomy to inform us about our place in the universe¿was deeply tied to ongoing developments in politics, exploration, culture, and technology.The book offers in-depth historical context over nearly four centuries, focusing in particular on the often neglected role that Portugal and Spain played in the development of cosmography. It details the great activity emerging from the Iberian and Italic peninsulas, including numerous voyagers of exploration, a clear commercial intention, and advancements in map-making techniques. In doing so, it provides a unique perspective on the ¿Longitude problem¿ not available in most other literature on the topic.Rigorously researched and sweeping in scope, this book will serve as an invaluable source for historians and readers interested in the history of science, of astronomy, and of exploration from a southern European perspective.

This catalog is the first in-depth investigation of comets that were reported since the 17th century, but not confirmed and subsequently lost. Volume I of this two-volume work covers objects observed between 1600 and 1899, a period that was dominated by visual observations and was experiencing a rapid evolution in science.The book uniquely combines the history and culture of comet hunting and discovery with modern tools of orbital mechanics to present a wholesome catalog of unconfirmed and suspected comets. Each case includes a presentation of the observations, a discussion about the observer (when possible), consideration of the historic context, and a conclusion as to the nature of the object. In most cases, the book presents material from original sources, including some never before published that were acquired from observatories, libraries, and historical societies around the world.Although some of these unconfirmed comets turned out to be misidentifications of planets or star clusters, fabrications, or poor observations of comets that were already being observed, the Authors did identify many objects that were likely real comets. In some cases, the Authors were even able to derive orbits for the first time. These observations may be valuable in the future, as they could prove to be observations of periodic comets still to be discovered.