Vesna Vuković, Universe Unbuttoned Published by the author. ISBN 978-154-066-678-9 Vesna’s poetry surprises us, simple humans, because we have no other option than reading it as if it referred to the same cosmos we live in. Many of us, at birth, were poured into a pre-designed world where we shape ourselves to the profile of the glass. In such a well known cosmos, we always knew wether to pack for warm weather or cold. But when you see your family dissapear, your cup cracked, your country torn apart, when you realize that the only way is up, then, where to begin, if not from the end? As a beaver…
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Early times of the ROA-Montsec Baker-Nunn camera
I found among my archives the article by Michael R. Pearlman with title «Early Experience of the SAO Satellite-Tracking Program», originally published in EOS: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union –The Weekly Newspaper of Geophysics). This piece explains the origins of the world-wide network of fast photographic cameras set up in the fifties by the United States of America (the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory), for artificial satellite follow-up. The network played an interesting role in the early times of the research on orbital dynamics, and it got the first Western measurements of the orbits of Soviet spacecraft. The article includes the first Western image of Sputnik 1 (the booster, in fact).…
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Cut out and build your own icosahedral Earth
Stop discussing!: Earth is neither flat nor round, there is a consensus solution! Directly imported from the past (Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, Vol. 64, No. 25, June 21st 1983), here we present the cut-out-and-do-it-yourself model of the icosahedral Earth. For a further outlandish turn, the model includes the contour lines (at 5 m intervals) of the ocean geoid determined by Seasat satellites. Download the model from these links, in formats jpg, tiff or pdf.
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Summaries of SpS17 Discussions IAU GA 2012 Special Session on Light Pollution
D. Galadí-Enríquez took part in the XXVIII General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Beijing, 2012, specifically in the session on protection of the night sky. There I had the chance to present a summary on «Legal protection of the night sky in Andalusia (Western Europe)», prepared in collaboration with Ángela Ranea-Palma, from the Ministry for the Environment of the Regional Government of Andalusia (Junta de Andalucía). Here you can download the summary of our talk, and in this second link you will find the slides used during the speech. Also, I chaired the discussion on blue light of the Special Session on Light Pollution and I prepared the…
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The Michael Hoskin Solar Centre
Bilingual volume English-Spanish, prepared by several authors for the inauguration of the Michael Hoskin Solar Centre, linked to the Dolmens of Antequera Archaeological Site. Coordinated by Rafael Maura Mijares, who was also the author of several of its chapters, this work includes contributions from a series of outstanding personalities in the field of ethnoastronomy: Juan Antonio Belmonte Avilés, Rafael Maura Mijares, Margarita Sánchez Romero, Carmen Martín Blanco, David Galadí Enríquez, Michael Hoskin, Aurora Villalobos Gómez, Ángel Fernández Sanzo. This book offers an attractive summary on the foundations of archaeoastronomy, and about the importance of astronomy for prehistoric populations around the Mediterranean basin, paying special attention to the civilization that built…
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Stellar Structure and Habitable Planet Finding
Stellar Structure and Habitable Planet Finding was publshed by the European Space Agency as Special Publication number 485. The book contains the proceedings of the First Eddington Workshop, celebrated in Cordova (Spain) in 2001, with David Galadí-Enríquez as coordinator of its local organising committee. The proceedings were edited by Fabio Favata, Ian W. Roxburgh and D. Galadí-Enríquez. Download here the complete proceedings. Eddington was a project for an ESA mission devoted to the search of extrasolar planets applying the photometric transit method. The mission would have been useful, too, for astroseismology studies oriented towards the study of stellar structure. The workshop discussed the mission profile, spacecraft, payload and scientific cases.…
