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957 results in Observational Astronomy, Techniques and Instrumentation

Page 14 of 48

  • Chapter 10 - Photometry

  • Frederick R. Chromey, Vassar College, New York
  • Book:
    To Measure the Sky
    Published online:
    05 February 2019
    Print publication:
    20 October 2016, pp 316-361

  • Summary

    Astronomers have measured apparent brightness since ancient times, and, as is usual in science, technology has acutely influenced their success. Prior to the 1860s, observers estimated brightness using only their eyes, expressing the results in the uncannily persistent magnitude system that Ptolemy introduced in the second century.1 As Arago notes, the results were not satisfactory.

  • 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.

Practical Optical Interferometry
  • Imaging at Visible and Infrared Wavelengths
  • David F. Buscher
  • Foreword by Malcolm Longair
  • Published online:
    05 August 2015
    Print publication:
    28 July 2015
  • Optical interferometry is a powerful technique to make images on angular scales hundreds of times smaller than is possible with the largest telescopes. This concise guide provides an introduction to the technique for graduate students and researchers who want to make interferometric observations and acts as a reference for technologists building new instruments. Starting from the principles of interference, the author covers the core concepts of interferometry, showing how the effects of the Earth's atmosphere can be overcome using closure phase, and the complete process of making an observation, from planning to image reconstruction. This rigorous approach emphasizes the use of rules-of-thumb for important parameters such as the signal-to-noise ratios, requirements for sampling the Fourier plane and predicting image quality. The handbook is supported by web resources, including the Python source code used to make many of the graphs, as well as an interferometry simulation framework, available at www.cambridge.org/9781107042179.

Page 14 of 48