C41/Icha Science Meetings
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Improving Point Cloud Quality for Mobile Laser Scanning
School of Engineering and Science Dissertation for a Ph.D. in Computer Science Improving Point Cloud Quality for Mobile Laser Scanning Jan Elseberg November 2013 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Andreas Nüchter Second Reviewer: Prof. Dr. Andreas Birk Third Reviewer: Prof. Dr. Joachim Hertzberg Fourth Reviewer: Prof. Dr. Rolf Lakämper Date of Defense: 13th of September 2013 Abstract This thesis deals with mobile laser scanning and the complex challenges that it poses to data processing, calibration and registration. New approaches to storing, searching and displaying point cloud data as well as algorithms for calibrating mobile laser scanners and registering laser scans are presented and discussed. Novel methods are tested on state of the art mobile laser scanning systems and are examined in detail. Irma3D, an autonomous mobile laser scanning platform has been developed for the purpose of experimentation. This work is the result of several years of research in robotics and laser scanning. It is the accumulation of many journal articles and conference papers that have been reviewed by peers in the field of computer science, robotics, artificial intelligence and surveying. Danksagung The work that goes into finishing a work like this is long and arduous, yet it can at times be pleasing, exciting and even fun. I would like to thank my advisor Prof. Dr. Andreas Nüchter for providing such joy during my experiences as a Ph.D. student. His infectious eagerness for the subject and his ability to teach are without equal. Prof. Dr. Joachim Hertzberg deserves many thanks for introducing me to robotics and for being such an insightful teacher of interesting subjects. -
COMMISSION C4 WORLD HERITAGE and ASTRONOMY 1. Background
Transactions IAU, Volume XXXA Reports on Astronomy 2015-2018 c 2018 International Astronomical Union Piero Benvenuti, ed. DOI: 00.0000/X000000000000000X COMMISSION C4 WORLD HERITAGE AND ASTRONOMY PATRIMOINE MONDIAL ET ASTRONOMIE PRESIDENT Clive Ruggles VICE-PRESIDENT Gudrun Wolfschmidt PAST PRESIDENT N/A ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Roger Ferlet, Siramas Komonjinda, Mikhail Marov, Malcolm Smith COMMISSION C4 WORKING GROUPS Div. C / Commission C4 WG1 Windows to the Universe: High-Mountain Observatories and other Astronomical Sites of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries (Joint with Commission B7) Div. C / Commission C4 WG2 Classical Observatories from the Renaissance to the 20th Century Div. C / Commission C4 WG3 Heritage of Space Exploration Div. C / Commission C4 WG4 Astronomical Heritage in Danger Div. C / Commission C4 WG5 Intangible Heritage (Joint with Commission C1) Div. C / Commission C4 WGAAC Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture (Joint with Commission C3) TRIENNIAL REPORT 2015-2018 1. Background UNESCO's Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative (AWHI) (whc.unesco.org/en/ astronomy) has existed since 2004 to identify, promote and protect heritage, and potential World Heritage, connected with astronomy. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between UNESCO and the IAU, under which the IAU undertook to implement the AWHI jointly with UNESCO, was signed in 2008 ahead of the IYA 2009. This commitment now continues indefinitely, UNESCO and the IAU having entered into a wider global partnership. The Astronomy and World Heritage Working Group -
Commission C4 Annual Report 2017
Commission C4 annual report 2017 Report for the period January to December 2017 The Commission's main achievements during 2017 are as follows. 1 The publication of the second ICOMOS-IAU Thematic Study on astronomical heritage ("TS2"). Heritage Sites of Astronomy and Archaeoastronomy in the Context of the World Heritage Convention: Thematic Study no. 2 was published as an e-book in June, in time for the 2017 UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Kraków, and as a paperback in November, in time for the ICOMOS General Assembly in Delhi. ICOMOS Thematic Studies (sometimes produced in co-operation with specialist partner organisations) aim to provide a synthesis of current research and knowledge on a specific theme and/or region, and are useful to State Parties wishing to nominate a heritage property for inscription on the World Heritage List. TS2 examines a number of key questions relating to astronomical heritage sites and their potential recognition as World Heritage, attempting to identify what might constitute “outstanding universal value” (OUV) in relation to astronomy. It represents the culmination of several years' work to address some of the most challenging issues raised in the first ICOMOS-IAU Thematic Study ("TS1"), published in 2010. A particularly complex issue is the recognition and protection of dark skies. Dark sky areas cannot in themselves be considered as potential World Heritage Sites, but TS2 includes a thematic chapter by Michel Cotte of ICOMOS considering a range of ways in which dark sky values can be interrelated with broader cultural or natural values of a place and thereby contribute to its overall cultural or natural value and potential OUV. -
UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The science of the stars in Danzig from Rheticus to Hevelius / Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7n41x7fd Author Jensen, Derek Publication Date 2006 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO THE SCIENCE OF THE STARS IN DANZIG FROM RHETICUS TO HEVELIUS A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History (Science Studies) by Derek Jensen Committee in charge: Professor Robert S. Westman, Chair Professor Luce Giard Professor John Marino Professor Naomi Oreskes Professor Donald Rutherford 2006 The dissertation of Derek Jensen is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm: _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2006 iii FOR SARA iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page........................................................................................................... iii Dedication ................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ...................................................................................................... v List of Figures .......................................................................................................... -
Hadley's Octant (A. D. 1731)
HADLEY’S OCTANT (A. D. 1731). On the occasion of the second centenary of the invention of reflecting instruments and in accordance with the usual custom of reproducing in the Hydrographic Review documents of particular interest connected with the history of nautical and hydrographic science, the communication made by John Hadley to the Royal Society of London on 13th May, 1731, is repro duced hereafter in facsimile. This communication was published in N° 420 of the Philosophical Transactions. It appears that the oldest document in which allusion is made to the principle of reflection by plane mirrors, as applied to the measurement of angles, is the History of the Royal Society of London by B ir c h . In this book, under the date of 22nd August, 1666, it is stated “ Mr. H o o k mentionned a new astronomical instrument for making observations of distances by reflection”. In another place it may be read that on the 29th August of the same year, H o o k spoke of this instrument again, it being then under construction, to the members of the Society. They invited him to submit it as soon as possible and this was done on 12th September of that year. The instrument submitted by H o o k differed in important details from the modern sextant; it was provided with but one mirror and thus was a single reflecting instrument. This was the fundamental defect which made it impos sible for H o o k ’s invention to be a success. However, the idea of using reflection from a plane mirror for the measu rement of angles was not forgotten and, in spite of H o o k ’s want of success the principle was taken up by others who sought to correct the disadvantages of the instrument as first invented. -
Lunar Distances Final
A (NOT SO) BRIEF HISTORY OF LUNAR DISTANCES: LUNAR LONGITUDE DETERMINATION AT SEA BEFORE THE CHRONOMETER Richard de Grijs Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, Balaclava Road, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia Email: [email protected] Abstract: Longitude determination at sea gained increasing commercial importance in the late Middle Ages, spawned by a commensurate increase in long-distance merchant shipping activity. Prior to the successful development of an accurate marine timepiece in the late-eighteenth century, marine navigators relied predominantly on the Moon for their time and longitude determinations. Lunar eclipses had been used for relative position determinations since Antiquity, but their rare occurrences precludes their routine use as reliable way markers. Measuring lunar distances, using the projected positions on the sky of the Moon and bright reference objects—the Sun or one or more bright stars—became the method of choice. It gained in profile and importance through the British Board of Longitude’s endorsement in 1765 of the establishment of a Nautical Almanac. Numerous ‘projectors’ jumped onto the bandwagon, leading to a proliferation of lunar ephemeris tables. Chronometers became both more affordable and more commonplace by the mid-nineteenth century, signaling the beginning of the end for the lunar distance method as a means to determine one’s longitude at sea. Keywords: lunar eclipses, lunar distance method, longitude determination, almanacs, ephemeris tables 1 THE MOON AS A RELIABLE GUIDE FOR NAVIGATION As European nations increasingly ventured beyond their home waters from the late Middle Ages onwards, developing the means to determine one’s position at sea, out of view of familiar shorelines, became an increasingly pressing problem. -
A Survey for Low-Mass Stellar and Substellar Members of the Hyades Open Cluster
Astronomy & Astrophysics manuscript no. aa30134-16˙12Jan2018 © ESO 2018 January 16, 2018 A survey for low-mass stellar and substellar members of the Hyades open cluster. Stanislav Melnikov1;2 and Jochen Eislo¨ffel1 1 Thuringer¨ Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Sternwarte 5, 07778 Tautenburg, Germany 2 Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute, Astronomical str. 33, 700052 Tashkent, Uzbekistan Received / Accepted ABSTRACT Context. Unlike young open clusters (with ages < 250 Myr), the Hyades cluster (age ∼ 600 Myr) has a clear deficit of very low-mass stars (VLM) and brown dwarfs (BD). Since this open cluster has a low stellar density and covers several tens of square degrees on the sky, extended surveys are required to improve the statistics of the VLM/BD objects in the cluster. Aims. We search for new VLM stars and BD candidates in the Hyades cluster to improve the present-day cluster mass function down to substellar masses. Methods. An imaging survey of the Hyades with a completeness limit of 21m: 5 in the R band and 20m: 5 in the I band was carried out with the 2k × 2k CCD Schmidt camera at the 2m Alfred Jensch Telescope in Tautenburg. We performed a photometric selection of the cluster member candidates by combining results of our survey with 2MASS JHKs photometry. Results. We present a photometric and proper motion survey covering 23.4 deg2 in the Hyades cluster core region. Using optical/IR colour-magnitude diagrams, we identify 66 photometric cluster member candidates in the magnitude range 14m: 7 < I < 20m: 5. The proper motion measurements are based on several all-sky surveys with an epoch difference of 60-70 years for the bright objects. -
Homo Erectus, Became Extinct About 1.7 Million Years Ago
Bear & Company One Park Street Rochester, Vermont 05767 www.BearandCompanyBooks.com Bear & Company is a division of Inner Traditions International Copyright © 2013 by Frank Joseph All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Joseph, Frank. Before Atlantis : 20 million years of human and pre-human cultures / Frank Joseph. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. Summary: “A comprehensive exploration of Earth’s ancient past, the evolution of humanity, the rise of civilization, and the effects of global catastrophe”—Provided by publisher. print ISBN: 978-1-59143-157-2 ebook ISBN: 978-1-59143-826-7 1. Prehistoric peoples. 2. Civilization, Ancient. 3. Atlantis (Legendary place) I. Title. GN740.J68 2013 930—dc23 2012037131 Chapter 8 is a revised, expanded version of the original article that appeared in The Barnes Review (Washington, D.C., Volume XVII, Number 4, July/August 2011), and chapter 9 is a revised and expanded version of the original article that appeared in The Barnes Review (Washington, D.C., Volume XVII, Number 5, September/October 2011). Both are republished here with permission. To send correspondence to the author of this book, mail a first-class letter to the author c/o Inner Traditions • Bear & Company, One Park Street, Rochester, VT 05767, and we will forward the communication. BEFORE ATLANTIS “Making use of extensive evidence from biology, genetics, geology, archaeology, art history, cultural anthropology, and archaeoastronomy, Frank Joseph offers readers many intriguing alternative ideas about the origin of the human species, the origin of civilization, and the peopling of the Americas.” MICHAEL A. -
Mathematical Instruments Commonly Used Among the Ottomans
Advances in Historical Studies, 2019, 8, 36-57 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ahs ISSN Online: 2327-0446 ISSN Print: 2327-0438 Mathematical Instruments Commonly Used among the Ottomans Irem Aslan Seyhan Department of Philosophy, Bartın University, Bartın, Turkey How to cite this paper: Seyhan, I. A. Abstract (2019). Mathematical Instruments Com- monly Used among the Ottomans. Ad- At the end of 17th century and during 18th century, after devastating Russian vances in Historical Studies, 8, 36-57. wars the Ottomans realized that they fell behind of the war technology of the https://doi.org/10.4236/ahs.2019.81003 Western militaries. In order to catch up with their Western rivals, they de- cided that they had to reform their education systems. For that they sent sev- Received: January 24, 2019 Accepted: March 5, 2019 eral students to abroad for education and started to translate Western books. Published: March 8, 2019 They established Western style military academies of engineering. They also invited foreign teachers in order to give education in these institutes and they Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and consulted them while there were preparing the curriculum. For all these, Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative during the modernization period, the reform (nizâm-ı cedid) planers mod- Commons Attribution International elled mainly France, especially for teaching the applied disciplines. Since their License (CC BY 4.0). main aim was to grasp the technology of the West, their interest focused on http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ the applied part of sciences and mathematics. -
The Ancient Orient
The Ancient Orient Ralph Abraham∗ June 9, 2013 Abstract We continue to track the emergence of geometry and algebra in prehistory and early historical artifacts. Here we look for surviving repeated patterns from the ancient Near East. ∗Mathematics Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA USA-95064. [email protected] 1 1. Introduction In tracking the evolution of the mathematical knowledge manifest in the Alhambra repeating patterns, we have followed traces from the shamanic caves of paleolithic Europe to the early settlements of neolithic Anatolia. We have seen traces still surviving in 19th century Siberia and Amazonia. We seek now to fill a gap in this trajectory with the earliest civilizations of the ancient Near East: Mesopotamia and Egypt. The "ancient Near East" is an obsolete usage, but so familiar that we must use it. Its geographic compass coincides more-or-less with the modern Middle East: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, the Levant, Egypt, Malta, and the Arabian Peninsula. Within this area we locate neolithic Catal Huyuk at the top, Mesopotamia (Sumer, Babylonia, Akkad) in the center, and ancient Egypt at the bottom. We are proposing a circular arc trajectory of cultural diffusion from the paleolithic caves of Europe (32 KYA) to the neolithic villages of Anatolia (9 KYA), on to the ancient Near East (6 KYA), from top to bottom, leading eventually to the appearance of repeating patterns in early Islam (1.4 KYA), then around to Spain, and the Alhambra (0.7 KYA). But we begin with a recent reconstruction of the prehistory of this region which has evolved from efforts to understand the genesis of the Ancient Egypt of the pharaohs. -
LIMITATIONS of METHODS: the ACCURACY of the VALUES MEASURED for the EARTH’S/SUN’S ORBITAL ELEMENTS in the MIDDLE EAST, A.D
JHA, xliv (2013) LIMITATIONS OF METHODS: THE ACCURACY OF THE VALUES MEASURED FOR THE EARTH’S/SUN’S ORBITAL ELEMENTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, A.D. 800–1500, PART 1 S. MOHAMMAD MOZAFFARI, Research Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics of Maragha The present paper deals with the methods proposed and the values achieved for the eccentricity and the longitude of apogee of the (apparent) orbit of the Sun in the Ptolemaic context in the Middle East during the medieval period. The main goals of this research are as follows: first, to determine the accuracy of the historical values in relation to the theoretical accuracy and/or the intrinsic limitations of the methods used; second, to investigate whether medieval astronomers were aware of the limita- tions, and if so, which alternative methods (assumed to have a higher accuracy) were then proposed; and finally, to see what was the fruit of the substitution in the sense of improving the accuracy of the values achieved. In Section 1, the Ptolemaic eccentric orbit of the Sun and its parameters are introduced. Then, its relation to the Keplerian elliptical orbit of the Earth, which will be used as a criterion for comparing the historical values, is briefly explained. In Section 2, three standard methods of measurement of the solar orbital elements in the medieval period found in the primary sources are reviewed. In Section 3, more than twenty values for the solar eccentricity and longitude of apogee from the medieval period will be classified, provided with historical comments. Discus- sion and conclusions will appear in Section 4 (in Part 2), followed there by two discussions of the medieval astronomers’ considerations of the motion of the solar apogee and their diverse interpretations of the variation in the values achieved for the solar eccentricity. -
Some Board of Longitude Instruments in the Nineteenth Century
SOME BOARD OF LONGITUDE INSTRUMENTS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY A.N. STIMSON National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London A series of calamitous British disasters at sea occurred at the turn of the 17th century, many of which can be attributed to poor navigation compounded by inability to find longitude. Perhaps the most momentous was that of Sir Cloudsley Shovel's returning Mediterranean Squadron which was comprehensively wrecked on the Scilly Islands in 1707 with the loss of four large warships and nearly 2000 men.1 An increasing public outcry at this regular loss of life and keenly felt loss of trade revenue resulted in an Act of Parliament which was intended to improve the inadequate state of navigation by stimulating an answer to the seemingly impossible problem of finding longitude at sea. On 20th July, 1714 Queen Anne gave her assent to "A Bill for Providing a Public Reward for such Person or Persons as shall Discover the Longitude at Sea". £ 20,000, an enormous sum of money at that time, was to be awarded to anyone who could provide a practical solution of general utility which would enable a navigator to find his ship's position to within twenty geographical miles. Lesser sums were to be awarded for methods which produced less accurate results.2 To oversee the management of these awards and to judge the prac- ticability of the solutions proposed, the Act provided for a Board of Commissioners. This was composed of the best scientific and seafaring minds of the day in addition to the inevitable political appointments.