Polarimetry Iau S305

The advances in solar, planetary, and extrasolar science employing polarimetric tools are far-reaching, and the pace of discovery is accelerating rapidly. In the last three decades, the emphasis of solar polarimetry has been to achieve simultaneously high spectral, spatial, and temporal resolution for all four Stokes parameters. In the field of stellar polarimetry the developments have been equally impressive, in allowing the detection and surface mapping of magnetic fields across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. This volume, arising from IAU Symposium 305, is devoted to sharing advances in science, data analysis, modeling, and instrumentation between solar and non-solar polarimetry communities. Given the relevance of polarimetric measurements to many aspects of astrophysics, the techniques and physical interpretations addressed within the book will be of interest to a wide audience of researchers and advanced students, in addition to those from solar and stellar communities.

This volume presents the latest research results on solar prominences, including new developments on e.g. chirality, fine structure, magnetism, diagnostic tools and relevant solar plasma physics. In 1875 solar prominences, as seen out of the solar limb, were described by P.A. Secchi in his book Le Soleil as "gigantic pink or peach-flower coloured flames". The development of spectroscopy, coronagraphy and polarimetry brought tremendous observational advances in the twentieth century. The authors present and discuss exciting new challenges (resulting from observations made by space and ground-based telescopes in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century) concerning the diagnostics of prominences, their formation, their life time and their eruption along with their impact in the heliosphere (including the Earth). The book starts with a general introduction of the prominence “object” with some historical background on observations and instrumentation. In the next chapter, the various forms of prominences are described with a thorough attempt of classification. Their thermodynamic (and velocity) properties are then derived with emphasis on the methods (and their limits) used. This goes from the simplest optically thin case to the heavy radiative treatment of plasmas out of local thermodynamic equilibrium. The following chapters are devoted to the magnetic field measurements and indirect derivation. A new branch of diagnostic tools, the seismology, is presented along with some MHD basics. This allows to better understand the propagation of waves, the energy and force equilibria. Both small-scale and large-scale studies and their relationship are presented. The importance of the newly discovered cavities is stressed in the context of prominence destabilization. The issues of prominence formation and eruption, their connection with flares and Coronal Mass Ejections and their impact on the Earth are addressed on the basis of the latest results. Finally, an exciting new area of research is unveiled with the newly discovered evidence of similar manifestations in the Universe and their possible impact on the habitability of exoplanets. References to the basic physics (where necessary) are provided and the proposed web sites addresses will allow the reader to load exciting movies. The book is aimed at advanced students in astrophysics, post-graduates, solar physicists and more generally astrophysicists. Amateurs will enjoy the many new images which go with the text.

This volume is a compilation of the research presented at the International Asteroid Day workshop which was celebrated at Barcelona on June 30th, 2015. The proceedings discuss the beginning of a new era in the study and exploration of the solar system’s minor bodies. International Asteroid Day commemorates the Tunguska event of June 30th, 1908. The workshop’s goal was to promote the importance of dealing proactively with impact hazards from space. Multidisciplinary experts contributed to this discussion by describing the nature of comets and asteroids along with their offspring, meteoroids. New missions to return material samples of asteroids back to Earth such as Osiris-REx and Hayabusa 2, as well as projects like AIM and DART which will test impact deflection techniques for Potentially Hazardous Asteroids encounters were also covered. The proceedings include both an outreach level to popularize impact hazards and a scientific character which covers the latest knowledge on these topics, as well as offering proposals of promising new techniques that will help gain new insights of the properties of these challenging bodies by studying meteoroids and meteorites. Asteroids, comets, meteoroids and meteorites are introduced with descriptions of their nature, origin, and solar system pathways.

This introductory textbook has been designed by a team of experts for elementary university courses in astronomy and astrophysics. It starts with a detailed discussion of the structure and history of our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, and goes on to give a general introduction to normal and active galaxies including models for their formation and evolution. The second part of the book provides an overview of the wide range of cosmological models and discusses the Big Bang and the expansion of the Universe. Written in an accessible style that avoids complex mathematics, and illustrated in colour throughout, this book is suitable for self-study and will appeal to amateur astronomers as well as undergraduate students. It contains numerous helpful learning features such as boxed summaries, student exercises with full solutions, and a glossary of terms. The book is also supported by a website hosting further teaching materials.

"More than forty chapters detail our current astronomical, compositional, geological, and geophysical knowledge of asteroids, as well as their unique physical processes and interrelationships with comets and meteorites"--Provided by publisher.