This book is a thorough introduction to climate science and global change. The author is a geologist who has spent much of his life investigating the climate of Earth from a time when it was warm and dinosaurs roamed the land, to today's changing climate. Bill Hay takes you on a journey to understand how the climate system works. He explores how humans are unintentionally conducting a grand uncontrolled experiment which is leading to unanticipated changes. We follow the twisting path of seemingly unrelated discoveries in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and even mathematics to learn how they led to our present knowledge of how our planet works. He explains why the weather is becoming increasingly chaotic as our planet warms at a rate far faster than at any time in its geologic past. He speculates on possible future outcomes, and suggests that nature itself may make some unexpected course corrections.

Paolo Ulivi and David Harland provide in Robotic Exploration of the Solar System a detailed history of unmanned missions of exploration of our Solar System. The subject is treated from an engineering and scientific standpoint. Technical descriptions of the spacecraft, of their mission designs and of instrumentations are provided. Scientific results are discussed in considerable depth, together with details of mission management.

This book provides recommendations for thermal and structural modelling of spacecraft structures for predicting thermoelastic responses. It touches upon the related aspects of the finite element and thermal lumped parameter method. A mix of theoretical and practical examples supports the modelling guidelines. Starting from the system needs of instruments of spacecraft, the reader is supported with the development of the practical requirements for the joint development of the thermal and structural models. It provides points of attention and suggestions to check the quality of the models.

This book introduces the reader to the wonders of Mars, covering all aspects from our past perceptions of the planet through to the latest knowledge on its history, its surface processes such as impact cratering, volcano formation, and glaciation, and its atmosphere and climate. In addition, a series of ten intriguing open issues are considered in a more advanced way. These include such thought-provoking questions as What turned off the planet’s magnetic field?, Why are the northern and southern hemispheres so different?, What was the fate of the once abundant water?, and Is there, or was there, life on Mars? Numerous original figures, unavailable elsewhere, reproduce details of images from Viking, CTX, MOC, HiRISE, THEMIS, and HRSC.

Are satellites a threat to individual privacy? - How bad is climate change and global warming? - Why can we not find Osama bin Laden? - Does the world have enough fresh water? Watching Earth from Space gives you the answers to these and many other burning questions of the day. This is the story of how our planet is being monitored by hundreds of space-borne instruments for both military and peaceful reasons. It highlights the technical challenges of those instruments and describes the agencies that gather useful information from them.

Not all amateur astronomers who live in a suburban location realize just how very effective a ‘chilled-chip’ astronomical CCD-camera and software can be at cutting through seemingly impenetrable light-pollution. CCD Astrophotography from the Suburbs details one man’s approach to the problem of getting high-quality astronomical images under light-polluted conditions. Adam Stuart has written this reference book for all amateur astronomers who are interested in CCD imaging, especially those who have to work under suburban conditions. The book outlines the materials and (commercially-available) equipment used for high-quality imaging. The many wonderful images Dr. Stuart has produced allow the reader to see the product of – initially – a fellow beginner’s efforts. The glorious images found in numerous books, and especially those seen in Sky and Telescope magazine – might seem out of reach. But this is not really the case. Respectable images are attainable with modest equipment. This book outlines a complete and thoroughly tested working program for every beginner to achieve high-quality digital imaging.

Former NASA Astronaut Harrison Schmitt advocates a private, investor-based approach to returning humans to the Moon—to extract Helium 3 for energy production, to use the Moon as a platform for science and manufacturing, and to establish permanent human colonies there in a kind of stepping stone community on the way to deeper space. With governments playing a supporting role—just as they have in the development of modern commercial aeronautics and agricultural production—Schmitt believes that a fundamentally private enterprise is the only type of organization capable of sustaining such an effort and, eventually, even making it pay off.

Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology offers a succinct and self-contained treatment of general relativity and its application to compact objects, gravitational waves and cosmology. The required mathematical concepts are introduced informally, following geometrical intuition as much as possible. The approach is theoretical, but there is ample discussion of observational aspects and of instrumental issues where appropriate.

It is a pleasure and an honor to offer a few words of forward to Brian Warner's guide to photometry. In his preface, he makes a considerable point about amateurs and professionals, and those who dare or deign to step across the line supposedly dividing the two. Here I would like to make a few observations about the two monikers, and suggest that there is not, or at least should not be, a distinction - tween "amateur" and "professional. " In preparing these remarks I referred to W- ster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1960 edition; not so new anymore, but that was when my collegiate experience began): am´a·teur, n. [F. , fr. L. amator lover, fr. amare to love. ] 1. One who cultivates a particular pursuit, study, or science, from taste, without pursuing it professionally; also, a dabbler. 2. In sports and esp. athletics, one who is not rated as a professional. Well. . . a "dabbler" eh? "not rated as a professional"? No wonder we have an identity problem here. Somehow in my youth as an amateur astronomer I missed this connotation of the term. To me, the meaning of the term amateur was do- nated by its root, "to love," that is, one who does what he does out of love of the subject, not for remuneration (to the extent one can get away with that).

Astronomy enthusiasts will all appreciate the detailed yet easily-assimilated description of star clusters, how they were formed as our Milky Way galaxy, how they evolved, and how they are classified. The latest research has revealed a vast amount of fascinating information about the clusters, along with some spectacular photographs.

The 25'" Coral Gables Conference was the culmination of the series that was begun in 1964. The conferences evolved under the titles that in~lude: Symmetry Principles at High Energy; Fundamental Interactions; Orbis Scientiae; and, occasionally, Unified Symmetry in the Small and in the Large. There was a pause after the 2()1h meeting in 1983 which was dedicated to P. A. M. Dirac. The conferences were resumed in 1993. Some of the reminiscences involved the absence of great minds who attended these meetings in the past and who were no longer with us. The list includes, just to name a few: Julian Schwinger, Robert Oppenheimer, Lars Onsager, Robert Hofstater, Abdus Salam, Richard Feynman, Stanislov Ulam, P. A. M. Dirac, Lord C. P. Snow, Eugene P. Wigner, Vladimir K. Zworykin, and Dixie Lee Ray. Most of these people were among the architects of modern physics and had participated in many of the early Coral Gables Conferences. We miss them. These conferences have contributed to the progress in high energy physics and cosmology. This year, again, papers were presented on familiar topics, such as neutrino masses, age and total mass of the universe, on the nature of dark matter, and on supersymmetry. The latter has now become a perennial issue. Like the weather, we all talk about it, but, so far cannot do anything to affect it. Another favorite subject was so-called monopoles, which theoretically participate in phenomena like condensation, confinement of electric charge, confinement of monopoles themselves, etc.

This guide is specifically aimed at those who are using—or want to use—Sequence Generator Pro. SGP is a “session management” software package that controls the telescope, mount, camera, and ancillary equipment to target and secure images during a night of imaging astronomical objects.
The book begins with a special tutorial to get up and running with SGP. With a comprehensive reference section, it takes the user in detail through the various aspects of user and equipment profiles, equipment definitions, the sequencer, and other essential elements of SGP. Finally, it focuses on how to get the most out of the ancillary programs—target databases, autoguiders, plate solvers, planetarium software, and other applications.

This book presents a collection of texts by the German physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1912-2007), for use in seminars on the history, epistemology and structure of physics. Most texts appear in English for the first time. Weizsäcker became famous through his works in physics, mainly in the early development of nuclear physics. Later he would also become well known as a philosopher and analyst of contemporary culture. Texts include the original publications of the “Weizsäcker-Bethe formula” of nuclear masses and the “Bethe-Weizsäcker cycle,” which explains the source of energy in the sun; both were developed by Bethe at the same time and independently of Weizsäcker. Further texts deal with Weizsäcker’s explanation of the origin of planets, his explanation of the “time arrow” in Statistical Mechanics and his analyses of Quantum Mechanics and the structure of physics in general.

Simply to say that this is a collection of essays in honor of the late Wolfgang Yourgrau (1908-1979) is to explain, at least for-the obviously many-"insiders," the unusually wide-ranging title of the present volume. In a Foreword to the Proceedings of the First International Colloquium (focusing on logic, physical reality, and history), held at the University of Denver in May of 1966 under their leadership, Wolfgang Y ourgrau and Allen Breck wrote, in an oblique reference to C. P. Snow: "Indeed there are not two or three or four cultures: there is only one culture; our generation has lost its awareness of this . . . . Historians, logicians, physicists-all are banded in one common enterprise, namely in their des ire to weave an enlightened fabric of human knowledge. " Augment, if you will, the foregoing categories of scholars with biologists, philos­ ophers, cosmologists, and theologians-all of whom, in addition to historians, Wolf­ gang Yourgrau, by dint of his inextinguishable enthusiasm and charismatic qualities, assembled in Denver for the Second and Third International Colloquia (in 1967 and 1974, respectively)-and a few other besides, and one arrives at a statement of the credo wh ich Y ourgrau not only professed, but consistently exemplified throughout his adult life.

The story of the famed race to the Moon between the US and the USSR has been told countless times. The strategies of these two superpowers have often been paralleled in a way that highlights their fight for dominance and efforts to develop needed new technologies.