1.
Naples
–
Naples is the capital of the Italian region Campania and the third-largest municipality in Italy, after Rome and Milan. In 2015, around 975,260 people lived within the administrative limits. The Metropolitan City of Naples had a population of 3,115,320, Naples is the 9th-most populous urban area in the European Union with a population of between 3 million and 3.7 million. About 4.4 million people live in the Naples metropolitan area, Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Bronze Age Greek settlements were established in the Naples area in the second millennium BC, a larger colony – initially known as Parthenope, Παρθενόπη – developed on the Island of Megaride around the ninth century BC, at the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Naples remained influential after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, thereafter, in union with Sicily, it became the capital of the Two Sicilies until the unification of Italy in 1861. Naples was the most-bombed Italian city during World War II, much of the citys 20th-century periphery was constructed under Benito Mussolinis fascist government, and during reconstruction efforts after World War II. The city has experienced significant economic growth in recent decades, and unemployment levels in the city, however, Naples still suffers from political and economic corruption, and unemployment levels remain high. Naples has the fourth-largest urban economy in Italy, after Milan, Rome and it is the worlds 103rd-richest city by purchasing power, with an estimated 2011 GDP of US$83.6 billion. The port of Naples is one of the most important in Europe, numerous major Italian companies, such as MSC Cruises Italy S. p. A, are headquartered in Naples. The city also hosts NATOs Allied Joint Force Command Naples, the SRM Institution for Economic Research, Naples is a full member of the Eurocities network of European cities. The city was selected to become the headquarters of the European institution ACP/UE and was named a City of Literature by UNESCOs Creative Cities Network, the Villa Rosebery, one of the three official residences of the President of Italy, is located in the citys Posillipo district. Naples historic city centre is the largest in Europe, covering 1,700 hectares and enclosing 27 centuries of history, Naples has long been a major cultural centre with a global sphere of influence, particularly during the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras. In the immediate vicinity of Naples are numerous culturally and historically significant sites, including the Palace of Caserta, culinarily, Naples is synonymous with pizza, which originated in the city. Neapolitan music has furthermore been highly influential, credited with the invention of the romantic guitar, according to CNN, the metro stop Toledo is the most beautiful in Europe and it won also the LEAF Award 2013 as Public building of the year. Naples is the Italian city with the highest number of accredited stars from the Michelin Guide, Naples sports scene is dominated by football and Serie A club S. S. C. Napoli, two-time Italian champions and winner of European trophies, who play at the San Paolo Stadium in the south-west of the city, the Phlegraean Fields around Naples has been inhabited since the Neolithic period. The earliest Greek settlements were established in the Naples area in the second millennium BC, sailors from the Greek island of Rhodes established a small commercial port called Parthenope on the island of Megaride in the ninth century BC
2.
Astronomy
–
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, more generally, all astronomical phenomena that originate outside Earths atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole, Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, during the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain the results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can play an active role, especially in the discovery. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, Astronomy means law of the stars. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, the system which claims that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects. Although the two share a common origin, they are now entirely distinct. Generally, either the term astronomy or astrophysics may be used to refer to this subject, however, since most modern astronomical research deals with subjects related to physics, modern astronomy could actually be called astrophysics. Few fields, such as astrometry, are purely astronomy rather than also astrophysics, some titles of the leading scientific journals in this field includeThe Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. In early times, astronomy only comprised the observation and predictions of the motions of objects visible to the naked eye, in some locations, early cultures assembled massive artifacts that possibly had some astronomical purpose. Before tools such as the telescope were invented, early study of the stars was conducted using the naked eye, most of early astronomy actually consisted of mapping the positions of the stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotating around it. This is known as the model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic system. The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a cycle known as a saros
3.
Theatines
–
The Theatines or the Congregation of Clerics Regular of the Divine Providence are a religious order of the Catholic Church, with the post-nominal initials C. R. The order was founded by Saint Cajetan, Paolo Consiglieri, Bonifacio da Colle, Carafa was Bishop of Chieti, Chieti is a city of the Abruzzi in Central Italy, from which the congregation adopted its specific name, to distinguish it from other congregations modelled upon it. The Theatines combined the pursuit of evangelical perfection traditional among religious orders with apostolic service generally expected of diocesan clergy and it was Caraffa who wrote the constitutions of the order. Cajetan consecrated his order to the Cross, which he adopted as its emblem, and it was approved on June 24 of that year, by Pope Clement VII in the Brief Exponi Nobis. On September 14, feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Cajetan and his companions made solemn profession before the altar of St. Peters Basilica in Rome. Giovanni Battista Bonziano, Bishop of Caserta, a papal delegate. Caraffa was chosen the first General, the chief object of the order was to recall the clergy to an edifying life and the laity to the practice of virtue. They founded oratories and hospitals, devoted themselves to preaching the Gospel and they were exclusive, aristocratic, and formidably austere. They wore the black cassock of the local clergy and maintained a modest lifestyle. The prohibition on both owning property and soliciting alms tended to limit applicants to members of the aristocracy, in 1546 they were briefly joined with the Somaschi Fathers, but as the object of the respective orders differed, they separated in 1555. In 1527 their house in Rome was sacked by the army of Charles V, and they founded many beautiful churches, among them that of SantAndrea della Valle in Rome, a gift of Costanza Piccolomini DAragona, Duchess of Amalfi. This church is a masterpiece of Carlo Maderno and contains paintings by Domenichino. The Theatines still operate the church, in France, through the efforts of Cardinal Mazarin, they built the Church of St. Anne la Royale opposite the Louvre in 1644. In Spain, under Philip II, the Theatine Cardinal Paolo Burali dArezzo, in Portugal, John IV, in 1648, gave the Theatines a splendid house and college for the education of noble youth. In England, under Henry VIII, Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph, in Bavaria, the Theatine Church St. Kajetan was built from 1663 to 1690, founded by Elector Ferdinand Maria. The Theatines were the first to found papal missions in, Golconda, Ava, Peru, Mingrelia, founded by Andrea Borromeo, the East Indies, Arabia, in 1626 Theatines went to Persia. Theatine manuscripts dating from 1530 until the end of the 18th century show there were established in a number of other countries also. By 1700 the Theatines numbered 1400, by the end of the eighteenth century, decline had set in, exacerbated by political upheavals
4.
Astronomer
–
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who concentrates their studies on a specific question or field outside of the scope of Earth. They look at stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies, as well as other celestial objects — either in observational astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers work on include, planetary science, solar astronomy, there are also related but distinct subjects like physical cosmology which studies the Universe as a whole. Astronomers usually fit into two types, Observational astronomers make direct observations of planets, stars and galaxies, and analyze the data, theoretical astronomers create and investigate models of things that cannot be observed. They use this data to create models or simulations to theorize how different celestial bodies work, there are further subcategories inside these two main branches of astronomy such as planetary astronomy, galactic astronomy or physical cosmology. Today, that distinction has disappeared and the terms astronomer. Professional astronomers are highly educated individuals who typically have a Ph. D. in physics or astronomy and are employed by research institutions or universities. They spend the majority of their time working on research, although quite often have other duties such as teaching, building instruments. The number of astronomers in the United States is actually quite small. The American Astronomical Society, which is the organization of professional astronomers in North America, has approximately 7,000 members. This number includes scientists from other such as physics, geology. The International Astronomical Union comprises almost 10,145 members from 70 different countries who are involved in research at the Ph. D. level. Before CCDs, photographic plates were a method of observation. Modern astronomers spend relatively little time at telescopes usually just a few weeks per year, analysis of observed phenomena, along with making predictions as to the causes of what they observe, takes the majority of observational astronomers time. Astronomers who serve as faculty spend much of their time teaching undergraduate and graduate classes, most universities also have outreach programs including public telescope time and sometimes planetariums as a public service to encourage interest in the field. Those who become astronomers usually have a background in maths, sciences. Taking courses that teach how to research, write and present papers are also invaluable, in college/university most astronomers get a Ph. D. in astronomy or physics. Keeping in mind how few there are it is understood that graduate schools in this field are very competitive
5.
Palermo
–
Palermo is a city of Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence, Palermo is located in the northwest of the island of Sicily, right by the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The city was founded in 734 BC by the Phoenicians as Ziz, Palermo then became a possession of Carthage, before becoming part of the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire and eventually part of the Byzantine Empire, for over a thousand years. The Greeks named the city Panormus meaning complete port, from 831 to 1072 the city was under Arab rule during the Emirate of Sicily when the city first became a capital. The Arabs shifted the Greek name into Balarme, the root for Palermos present-day name, eventually Sicily would be united with the Kingdom of Naples to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies until the Italian unification of 1860. The population of Palermo urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 855,285, in the central area, the city has a population of around 676,000 people. The inhabitants are known as Palermitani or, poetically, panormiti, the languages spoken by its inhabitants are the Italian language, Sicilian language and the Palermitano dialect. Palermo is Sicilys cultural, economic and touristic capital and it is a city rich in history, culture, art, music and food. Palermo is the main Sicilian industrial and commercial center, the industrial sectors include tourism, services, commerce. Palermo currently has an airport, and a significant underground economy. In fact, for cultural, artistic and economic reasons, Palermo was one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean and is now among the top tourist destinations in both Italy and Europe. It is the seat of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Arab-Norman Palermo. The city is going through careful redevelopment, preparing to become one of the major cities of the Euro-Mediterranean area. Roman Catholicism is highly important in Palermitano culture, the Patron Saint of Palermo is Santa Rosalia whose Feast Day is celebrated on 15 July. The area attracts significant numbers of each year and is widely known for its colourful fruit, vegetable and fish markets at the heart of Palermo, known as Vucciria, Ballarò. Palermo lies in a basin, formed by the Papireto, Kemonia, the basin was named the Conca dOro by the Arabs in the 9th century. The city is surrounded by a range which is named after the city itself. These mountains face the Tyrrhenian Sea, Palermo is home to a natural port and offers excellent views to the sea, especially from Monte Pellegrino
6.
Ceres (dwarf planet)
–
Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Its diameter is approximately 945 kilometers, making it the largest of the planets within the orbit of Neptune. The 33rd-largest known body in the Solar System, it is the dwarf planet within the orbit of Neptune. Composed of rock and ice, Ceres is estimated to approximately one third of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. Ceres is the object in the asteroid belt known to be rounded by its own gravity. From Earth, the apparent magnitude of Ceres ranges from 6.7 to 9.3, Ceres was the first asteroid discovered, by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo on 1 January 1801. It was originally considered a planet, but was reclassified as an asteroid in the 1850s after many other objects in similar orbits were discovered. Ceres appears to be differentiated into a core and icy mantle. The surface is probably a mixture of ice and various hydrated minerals such as carbonates. In January 2014, emissions of water vapor were detected from several regions of Ceres and this was unexpected, because large bodies in the asteroid belt typically do not emit vapor, a hallmark of comets. The robotic NASA spacecraft Dawn entered orbit around Ceres on 6 March 2015, pictures with a resolution previously unattained were taken during imaging sessions starting in January 2015 as Dawn approached Ceres, showing a cratered surface. Two distinct bright spots inside a crater were seen in a 19 February 2015 image, on 11 May 2015, NASA released a higher-resolution image showing that, instead of one or two spots, there are actually several. In October 2015, NASA released a true portrait of Ceres made by Dawn. In February 2017, organics were reported to have been detected on Ceres in Ernutet crater, Johann Elert Bode, in 1772, first suggested that an undiscovered planet could exist between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Kepler had already noticed the gap between Mars and Jupiter in 1596, the pattern predicted that the missing planet ought to have an orbit with a semi-major axis near 2.8 astronomical units. Although they did not discover Ceres, they found several large asteroids. One of the selected for the search was Giuseppe Piazzi. Before receiving his invitation to join the group, Piazzi discovered Ceres on 1 January 1801 and he was searching for the 87th of the Catalogue of the Zodiacal stars of Mr la Caille, but found that it was preceded by another
7.
Turin
–
Turin is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region and was the first capital city of Italy. The city is located mainly on the bank of the Po River, in front of Susa Valley and surrounded by the western Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 892,649 while the population of the area is estimated by Eurostat to be 1.7 million inhabitants. The Turin metropolitan area is estimated by the OECD to have a population of 2.2 million, in 1997 a part of the historical center of Torino was inscribed in the World Heritage List under the name Residences of the Royal House of Savoy. Turin is well known for its Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-classical, many of Turins public squares, castles, gardens and elegant palazzi such as Palazzo Madama, were built between the 16th and 18th centuries. This was after the capital of the Duchy of Savoy was moved to Turin from Chambery as part of the urban expansion, the city used to be a major European political center. Turin was Italys first capital city in 1861 and home to the House of Savoy, from 1563, it was the capital of the Duchy of Savoy, then of the Kingdom of Sardinia ruled by the Royal House of Savoy and finally the first capital of the unified Italy. Turin is sometimes called the cradle of Italian liberty for having been the birthplace and home of notable politicians and people who contributed to the Risorgimento, such as Cavour. The city currently hosts some of Italys best universities, colleges, academies, lycea and gymnasia, such as the University of Turin, founded in the 15th century, in addition, the city is home to museums such as the Museo Egizio and the Mole Antonelliana. Turins attractions make it one of the worlds top 250 tourist destinations, Turin is ranked third in Italy, after Milan and Rome, for economic strength. With a GDP of $58 billion, Turin is the worlds 78th richest city by purchasing power, as of 2010, the city has been ranked by GaWC as a Gamma World city. Turin is also home to much of the Italian automotive industry, the Taurini were an ancient Celto-Ligurian Alpine people, who occupied the upper valley of the Po River, in the center of modern Piedmont. In 218 BC, they were attacked by Hannibal as he was allied with their long-standing enemies, the Taurini chief town was captured by Hannibals forces after a three-day siege. As a people they are mentioned in history. It is believed that a Roman colony was established in 27 BC under the name of Castra Taurinorum, both Livy and Strabo mention the Taurinis country as including one of the passes of the Alps, which points to a wider use of the name in earlier times. In the 1st century BC, the Romans created a military camp, the typical Roman street grid can still be seen in the modern city, especially in the neighborhood known as the Quadrilatero Romano. Via Garibaldi traces the path of the Roman citys decumanus which began at the Porta Decumani. The Porta Palatina, on the side of the current city centre, is still preserved in a park near the Cathedral
8.
Sant'Andrea della Valle
–
SantAndrea della Valle is a basilica church in the rione of SantEustachio of the city of Rome, Italy. The basilica is the seat for the religious order of the Theatines. It is located on Piazza Vidoni at the intersection of Corso Vittorio Emanuele, since Amalfis patron was Saint Andrew, the church was planned in his honor. Work initially started around 1590 under the designs of Giacomo della Porta and Pier Paolo Olivieri, with the previous patrons death, direction of the church passed to Cardinal Alessandro Peretti di Montalto, nephew of Pope Sixtus V. Work restarted by 1608, financed by what was then an enormous endowment of over 150,000 gold scudi, the interior of the church was completed by 1650, with some changes added by Francesco Grimaldi. The fresco decoration of SantAndreas dome was one of the largest commissions of its day, the work was disputed by two Carracci pupils, Giovanni Lanfranco and Domenichino. In 1608, Lanfranco had been chosen by Cardinal Alessandro, in the end, both artists were employed, and Lanfrancos lavish dome decoration set the model for such decorations for the following decades. This dome was for a time the third largest dome in Rome, after the Basilica of St Peter. The angel is depicted in the style of his mentor, Bernini, in this chapel are buried Cardinal Marzio Ginetti and his nephew, the Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Ginetti. The second Strozzi Chapel has a Pietà, Leah and Rachel, the chapel was probably designed by Michelangelo, but executed by Leone Strozzi. Beneath the statues of Leah and Rachel are two bronze bas-reliefs depicting a Deposition from the Cross and Christs Descent into Limbo, the cenotaphs in black marble in the side walls were erected for the Strozzi family, Cardinal Lorenzo, Leone, Pietro, Roberto Strozzi and Maddalena Medici. The chapel of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart was designed by Aristide Leonori, the painting of the Madonna is by Silverio Capparoni and was blessed by Pope Pius IX. In the corner of the transept are situated two chapels. The chapel of the Crucifix displays an antique wooden crucifix above a painting of the Madonna inside a radiant halo, on the right side is the tomb of the Theatine Cardinal St Giuseppe Maria Tomasi. The Oratory of the Divine Love dates from 1751, the Chapel of the Madonna della Purità was originally dedicated to the Holy Family. In 1647 it was designated to the Madonna, patroness of the Theatines, the altar was consecrated in 1725 and shows beneath the tomb of the martyr Saint Fortunatus. The four lunettes on the arches were painted by Silvio Galimberti in 1912 and it was adorned with a golden radiant halo in gratitude for having saved the city from famine. On the left wall of the chapel is the tomb of cardinal Stoppani, the left transept is dedicated to Saint Cajetan, founder of the Theatines
9.
University of Malta
–
The University of Malta is the highest educational institution in Malta. It offers undergraduate degrees, postgraduate masters degrees and postgraduate doctorates. In post-nominals the Universitys name is abbreviated as Melit, a form of Melita. The administrative set up of the university academic and administrative. The main governing bodies are the Council, the Senate and the Faculty Boards, as the supreme governing body of the University, the Council is responsible for the administration of the University. Faculties group together departments concerned with an area of knowledge. The council is responsible for appointing staff members to academic posts. The senate is responsible for the academic matters of the University primarily regulating studies, research, documentation. The senate also establishes the entry regulations, the faculty board directs the academic tasks of the faculty. The board presents plans and proposals to the senate and the council, besides, it determines the studies, teaching and research within the faculty. In March 2016, it was announced that Professor Alfred J. Vella was elected by the members of the University Council as the next Rector of the University of Malta, Grade 1 is awarded for the highest level of achievement, whereas Grade 7 indicates the minimum satisfactory performance. However, entry on basis of maturity and experience is granted for certain courses in the arts, the Faculty of Dental Surgery allows for a maximum of six European students per year chosen according to merit and only after the students have passed an admissions interview. Full-time undergraduate courses are free-of-charge to citizens of Malta and the European Union, maltese students enrolled in higher education in Malta are entitled to a stipend. Fees are charged in the case of higher courses and to nationals from non-EU states, there are 600 international students studying at the university, comprising around 7% of the student population. There are 11,500 students including 750 international students from 82 countries, following full-time or part-time degree and diploma courses, the university hosts Erasmus and other exchange students. There are a further 2,500 pre-tertiary students at the Junior College, the university has fourteen Faculties, a number of institutes and centres and the School of Performing Arts. The floor area occupied by the building is between 5,000 and 6,000 square metres. A collection of one million volumes is housed throughout the Main Library, the library subscribes to 60,000 e-journals,308 print journal titles and a collection of e-books
10.
Ravenna
–
Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until that empire collapsed in 476. It then served as the capital of the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths until it was re-conquered in 540 by the Eastern Roman Empire. Afterwards, the city formed the centre of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until the invasion of the Lombards in 751, although an inland city, Ravenna is connected to the Adriatic Sea by the Candiano Canal. It is known for its well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture, the origin of the name Ravenna is unclear, although it is believed the name is Etruscan. Some have speculated that ravenna is related to Rasenna, the term that the Etruscans used for themselves, the origins of Ravenna are uncertain. Ravenna consisted of houses built on piles on a series of islands in a marshy lagoon – a situation similar to Venice several centuries later. The Romans ignored it during their conquest of the Po River Delta, in 49 BC, it was the location where Julius Caesar gathered his forces before crossing the Rubicon. Later, after his battle against Mark Antony in 31 BC and this harbor, protected at first by its own walls, was an important station of the Roman Imperial Fleet. Nowadays the city is landlocked, but Ravenna remained an important seaport on the Adriatic until the early Middle Ages, during the German campaigns, Thusnelda, widow of Arminius, and Marbod, King of the Marcomanni, were confined at Ravenna. Ravenna greatly prospered under Roman rule, Emperor Trajan built a 70 km long aqueduct at the beginning of the 2nd century. During the Marcomannic Wars, Germanic settlers in Ravenna revolted and managed to seize possession of the city, for this reason, Marcus Aurelius decided not only against bringing more barbarians into Italy, but even banished those who had previously been brought there. In AD402, Emperor Honorius transferred the capital of the Western Roman Empire from Milan to Ravenna, at that time it was home to 50,000 people. However, in 409, King Alaric I of the Visigoths simply bypassed Ravenna, after many vicissitudes, Galla Placidia returned to Ravenna with her son, Emperor Valentinian III and the support of her nephew Theodosius II. The late 5th century saw the dissolution of Roman authority in the west, Odoacer ruled as King of Italy for 13 years, but in 489 the Eastern Emperor Zeno sent the Ostrogoth King Theoderic the Great to re-take the Italian peninsula. After losing the Battle of Verona, Odoacer retreated to Ravenna, Theoderic took Ravenna in 493, supposedly slew Odoacer with his own hands, and Ravenna became the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy. Both Odoacer and Theoderic and their followers were Arian Christians, but co-existed peacefully with the Latins, Ravennas Orthodox bishops carried out notable building projects, of which the sole surviving one is the Capella Arcivescovile. Theoderic allowed Roman citizens within his kingdom to be subject to Roman law, the Goths, meanwhile, lived under their own laws and customs
11.
Cremona
–
Cremona listen is a city and comune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana. It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local city, Cremona is first mentioned in history as a settlement of the Cenomani, a Gallic tribe that arrived in the Po valley around 400 BC. However, the name Cremona most likely back to earlier settlers and puzzled the ancients. In 218 BC the Romans established on that spot their first military outpost north of the Po river, Cremona and nearby Placentia, were founded in the same year, as bases for penetration into what became the Roman Province of Gallia Cisalpina. Cremona quickly grew into one of the largest towns in northern Italy, as it was on the road connecting Genoa to Aquileia. The famous poet Virgil, who went to school in Cremona, had to forfeit his ancestral farm, when the Lombards invaded much of Italy in the second half of the 6th century AD, Cremona remained a Byzantine stronghold as part of the Exarchate of Ravenna. The city expanded towards the north-west, with the creation of a great trenched camp outside the walls, in 603, it was conquered by the Lombard king Agilulf and again destroyed. Its territory was divided between the two duchies of Brescia and Bergamo, however, in 615 queen Theodelinda, a devout Roman Catholic intent on converting her people, had Cremona rebuilt and re-installed a bishop there. Control of the city fell increasingly to its bishop, who became a Holy Roman Empire vassal after Charlemagnes conquest of Italy, in this way, Cremona increased its power and its prosperity steadily and some of its bishops had important roles between the 10th and 11th centuries. Bishop Liutprand of Cremona was a member of the Imperial court under the Saxony dynasty and its economy was boosted by the creation of a river port out of the former Byzantine fortress. However, the two bishops Lambert and Ubaldo created discord with the citys people, Emperor Conrad II settled the quarrel by entering in Cremona in 1037 together with the young Pope Benedict IX. Under Henry IV, Cremona refused to pay the oppressive taxes requested by the Empire, according to a legend, the great gonfaloniere Giovanni Baldesio of Cremona faced the emperor himself in a duel. As Henry was knocked from his horse, the city was saved the annual payment of the 3 kg golden ball, which, for that year, was instead given to Berta, Giovannis girlfriend, as her dowry. The first historical news about a free Cremona is from 1093, as it entered into an alliance led by Mathilde of Canossa, together with Lodi, Milan. The conflict ended with the defeat of Henry IV and his famous humiliation of Canossa to Pope Urban II in 1098, Cremona gained the Insula Fulcheria, the area around the nearby city of Crema, as its territory. After that time, the new commune warred against nearby cities to enlarge its territory, in 1107 Cremona conquered Tortona, but four years later its army was defeated near Bressanoro. As in many northern Italian cities, the people were divided into two opposing parties, the Guelphs, who were stronger in the new city, and the Ghibellines, the parties were so irreconcilable that the former built a second Communal Palace, the still existing Palazzo Cittanova. When Frederick Barbarossa descended into Italy to assert his authority, Cremona sided with him in order to gain his support against Crema, the subsequent victory and its loyal imperial stance earned Cremona the right to create a mint for its own coinage in 1154
12.
University of Palermo
–
For the University of Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, see University of Palermo. The University of Palermo is a university located in Palermo, Italy and it is organized in 12 Faculties. The University of Palermo was officially founded in 1806, although its earliest roots date back to 1498 when medicine and law were taught there. In 1767 they were expelled from the kingdom by King Ferdinand I, at this time the same King Ferdinand decided to grant a worthy seat to the Accademia, moving its location to the Convent of the Teatini Fathers next to the Church of St. Giuseppe. Not far from Palazzo Steri, on land belonging to the Chiaramonte. Today, the University has grown to be an institution of about 2000 lecturers and 50,000 students in research in all main fields of study is carried out. In the past few years the university has taken part in international cooperation programmes
13.
Jesse Ramsden
–
Jesse Ramsden FRS FRSE was an English mathematician, astronomical and scientific instrument maker. Ramsden was born at Salterhebble, Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Having attended the school at Halifax for three years, he was sent at the age of twelve to his uncle at Craven in the North Riding. After serving his apprenticeship as a cloth-worker in Halifax, he went to London where, in 1755, in 1758 he was apprenticed to a mathematical instrument maker and he proved so proficient that he was able to set up his own business only four years later. The quality and accuracy of his instruments established his reputation as the most able instrument maker in Europe for the forty years until his death in 1800. Ramsden married Sarah Dollond, daughter of John Dollond the famous maker of quality lenses. Little is known of their life together but Sarah did not accompany him when he moved his workshop, in his later years he lived above the workshop with a number of his apprentices. The acrimony sometimes got out of hand, in his favour it should be pointed out that many delays could be attributed to Ramsdens quest for perfection, continually refining his designs as the slightest shortcomings were revealed. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1786 and to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1798. The Copley Medal of the Royal Society was bestowed him in 1795 for his various inventions and improvements in philosophical instruments. ’ He died five years later at Brighton. Ramsden created one of the first high-quality dividing engines and this led to his speciality in dividing circles, which began to supersede the quadrants in observatories towards the end of the 18th century. He published a Description of an Engine for dividing Mathematical Instruments in 1777 and this work provided the basis for the subsequent Ordnance Survey of the counties of Britain. Ramsden is also responsible for the achromatic eyepiece named after him, the exit pupil of an eyepiece was once called the Ramsden disc in his honour. In 1791 he completed the Shuckburgh telescope, an equatorial mounted refracting telescope, chisholm, Hugh, ed. Ramsden, Jesse, Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition,17, Cambridge University Press. Notes and records of the Royal Society, a review of the book by Anita McConnell, Jesse Ramsden, Londons leading scientific instrument maker. The Tale of the Great Theodolites, FIG Working Week on Integrating the Generations. Kern, Ralf, Wissenschaftliche Instrumente in ihrer Zeit, Account of the life and labours of the late Mr. Ramsden. Letter of Professor Giuseppe Piazzi to M. de Lalande, the Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction
14.
Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies
–
Ferdinand I, was the King of the Two Sicilies from 1816, after his restoration following victory in the Napoleonic Wars. Before that he had been, since 1759, Ferdinand IV of the Kingdom of Naples and he was deposed twice from the throne of Naples, once by the revolutionary Parthenopean Republic for six months in 1799 and again by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1805. Ferdinand was the son of King Charles III of Spain, Naples and Sicily by his wife. On 10 August 1759, Charles succeeded his brother, Ferdinand VI. Ferdinand was the founder of the cadet House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Ferdinand was styled both Ferdinand III of Sicily and Ferdinand IV of Naples. On 21 January 1799, the Kingdom of Naples was abolished and replaced by the Parthenopaean Republic which lasted until 13 June 1799, Ferdinand was restored to the throne for a while. On 26 December 1805, Napoleon I of France declared Ferdinand deposed again, Ferdinand was restored for the second time following the Austrian victory at the Battle of Tolentino over rival monarch King Joachim I. On 8 March 1816 he merged the thrones of Sicily and Naples into the throne of the Two Sicilies and he continued to rule until his death on 4 January 1825. Ferdinand was born in Naples and grew up amidst many of the monuments erected there by his father which can be seen today, Ferdinand was his parents third son, his elder brother Charles was expected to inherit Naples and Sicily. When his father ascended the Spanish throne in 1759 he abdicated Naples in Ferdinands favor in accordance with the treaties forbidding the union of the two crowns, a regency council presided over by the Tuscan Bernardo Tanucci was set up. Ferdinands minority ended in 1767, and his first act was the expulsion of the Jesuits, the following year he married Archduchess Maria Carolina, daughter of Empress Maria Theresa. By the marriage contract the queen was to have a voice in the council of state after the birth of her first son, Tanucci, who attempted to thwart her, was dismissed in 1777. He became practically and afterward prime minister. Although not a mere grasping adventurer, he was responsible for reducing the internal administration of the country to a system of espionage, corruption. The French entered the city in spite of the resistance of the lazzaroni. When, a few weeks later the French troops were recalled to northern Italy, Ferdinand sent a hastily assembled force, under Cardinal Ruffo, to reconquer the mainland kingdom. Ruffo, with the support of British artillery, the Church, and the aristocracy, succeeded, reaching Naples in May 1800. After some months King Ferdinand returned to the throne, the king returned to Naples soon afterwards, and ordered a few hundred who had collaborated with the French executed
15.
Mu Cephei
–
Mu Cephei, also known as Herschels Garnet Star, is a red supergiant star in the constellation Cepheus. It appears garnet red and is located at the edge of the IC1396 nebula, since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as the M2 Ia standard by which other stars are classified. Mu Cephei is visually nearly 100,000 times brighter than the Sun, summing radiation at all wavelengths gives a luminosity of around 280,000 L☉, making it one of the most luminous red supergiants in the Milky Way. It is also one of the largest stars so far discovered, the deep red color of Mu Cephei was noted by William Herschel, who described it as a very fine deep garnet colour, such as the periodical star ο Ceti. It is thus known as Herschels Garnet Star. Mu Cephei was called Garnet sidus by Giuseppe Piazzi in his catalogue, an alternative name, Erakis, used in Antonín Bečvářs star catalogue, is probably due to confusion with Mu Draconis, which was previously called al-Rāqis in Arabic. In 1848, English astronomer John Russell Hind discovered that Mu Cephei was variable and this variability was quickly confirmed by German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander. Almost continual records of the stars variability have been maintained since 1881, Mu Cephei is a variable star and the prototype of the obsolete class of the Mu Cephei variables. It is now considered to be a variable of type SRc. Its apparent brightness varies erratically between magnitude 3.4 and 5.1, many different periods have been reported, but they are consistently near to either 860 days or 4,400 days. A very luminous red supergiant, Mu Cephei is likely to be the largest star visible to the naked eye and it is best seen from the northern hemisphere from August to January. This is a star with a peculiar velocity of 80.7 ±17.7 km/s. The distance to Mu Cephei is not very well known, the Hipparcos satellite was used to measure a parallax of 0.55 ±0.20 milliarcseconds, which corresponds to an estimated distance of 1, 333–2,857 parsecs. However, this value is close to the margin of error, the star is approximately 1,260 R☉, and were it placed in the Suns position, its radius would reach between the orbit of Jupiter and Saturn. Mu Cephei could fit around 2 billion Suns into its volume, the photosphere of Mu Cephei has an estimated temperature of 3,750 K. It may be surrounded by a shell extending out to a distance at least equal to 0.33 times the radius with a temperature of 2,055 ±25 K. This outer shell appears to contain molecular gases such as CO, H2O, infrared observations suggest the presence of a wide ring of dust and water with an inner radius about twice that of the star itself, extending to about four times the radius of the star. The star is surrounded by a shell of ejected material that extends outward to an angular distance of 6″ with an expansion velocity of 10 km s−1
16.
William Herschel
–
Frederick William Herschel, KH, FRS was a British astronomer and composer of German origin, and brother of fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel, with whom he worked. Born in the Electorate of Hanover, Herschel followed his father into the Military Band of Hanover, Herschel constructed his first large telescope in 1774, after which he spent nine years carrying out sky surveys to investigate double stars. The resolving power of the Herschel telescopes revealed that the nebulae in the Messier catalogue were clusters of stars, Herschel published catalogues of nebulae in 1802 and in 1820. In the course of an observation on 13 March 1781, he realized that one celestial body he had observed was not a star and this was the first planet to be discovered since antiquity and Herschel became famous overnight. As a result of this discovery, George III appointed him Court Astronomer and he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and grants were provided for the construction of new telescopes. Herschel pioneered the use of astronomical spectrophotometry as a tool, using prisms. Other work included a determination of the rotation period of Mars, the discovery that the Martian polar caps vary seasonally. In addition, Herschel discovered infrared radiation, Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1816. He was the first President of the Royal Astronomical Society when it was founded in 1820 and he died in August 1822, and his work was continued by his only son, John Herschel. Herschel was born in the Electorate of Hanover in Germany, then part of the Holy Roman Empire and his father was an oboist in the Hanover Military Band. In 1755 the Hanoverian Guards regiment, in whose band Wilhelm, at the time the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover were united under King George II. As the threat of war with France loomed, the Hanoverian Guards were recalled from England to defend Hanover, after they were defeated at the Battle of Hastenbeck, Herschels father Isaak sent his two sons to seek refuge in England in late 1757. Although his older brother Jakob had received his dismissal from the Hanoverian Guards, Wilhelm, nineteen years old at this time, was a quick student of the English language. In England he went by the English rendition of his name, in addition to the oboe, he played the violin and harpsichord and later the organ. He composed numerous works, including 24 symphonies and many concertos. Six of his symphonies were recorded in April 2002 by the London Mozart Players, Herschel moved to Sunderland in 1761 when Charles Avison immediately engaged him as first violin and soloist for his Newcastle orchestra, where he played for one season. In ‘Sunderland in the County of Durh, apprill 20th 1761’ he wrote his Symphony No.8 in C Minor. He was head of the Durham Militia band 1760–61 and visited the home of Sir Ralph Milbanke at Halnaby Hall in 1760, after Newcastle he moved to Leeds and Halifax where he was the first organist at St John the Baptist church
17.
Beta Delphini
–
Beta Delphini, also named Rotanev, is a binary star in the constellation of Delphinus. β Delphini is the stars Bayer designation and it bore an historical name, Rotanev, which arose as follows, Niccolò Cacciatore was the assistant to Giuseppe Piazzi, and later his successor as Director of the Palermo Observatory. The name first appeared in Piazzis Palermo Star Catalogue, when the Catalogue was published in 1814, the unfamiliar names Sualocin and Rotanev were attached to Alpha and Beta Delphini, respectively. Eventually the Reverend Thomas Webb, a British astronomer, puzzled out the explanation, Cacciatores name, Nicholas Hunter in English translation, would be Latinized to Nicolaus Venator. Reversing the letters of this construction produces the two star names and they have endured, the result of Cacciatores little practical joke of naming the two stars after himself. How Webb arrived at this explanation 45 years after the publication of the catalogue is still a mystery, in 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names to catalogue and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN approved the name Rotanev for Beta Delphini on 12 September 2016, in Chinese, 瓠瓜, meaning Good Gourd, refers to an asterism consisting of Beta Delphini, Alpha Delphini, Gamma2 Delphini, Delta Delphini, and Zeta Delphini. Beta Delphini was found to be a star system in 1873 by the American astronomer S. W. Burnham. The system consists of a pair of F-type stars stars that orbit each other with a period of 26.66 years, the plane of the orbit is inclined by an angle of 61° to the line of sight from the Earth. The two stars have a separation of about 0.44 arcseconds, making them a challenge to resolve with a telescope. The system is around 1.8 billion years old
18.
61 Cygni
–
61 Cygni /ˈsɪɡnɪ/ is a binary star system in the constellation Cygnus, consisting of a pair of K-type dwarf stars that orbit each other in a period of about 659 years. Of apparent magnitude 5.20 and 6.05, respectively,61 Cygni first attracted the attention of astronomers when its large proper motion was first demonstrated by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1804. Among all stars or stellar systems listed in the modern Hipparcos Catalogue,61 Cygni currently has the seventh-highest proper motion, no habitable planets have been confirmed in this stellar system to date. 61 Cygni is relatively dim, so it not appear on ancient star maps. The name 61 Cygni is part of the Flamsteed designation assigned to stars and it has also been called Bessels Star or Piazzis Flying Star. The first well recorded observation of the system using optical instruments was made by James Bradley on 25 September 1753. William Herschel began systematic observations of 61 Cygni as part of a study of binary stars. In 1792, Giuseppe Piazzi noticed the high proper motion when he compared his own observations of 61 Cygni with those of Bradley and this led to considerable interest in 61 Cygni by contemporary astronomers, and its continual observation since that date. Piazzis repeated measurements led to a value of its motion. It was in this record he christened the system as the Flying Star, peters calculated a better value based on observations made by Bernhard von Lindenau at Seeburg between 1812 and 1814, he calculated it to be 470 ±510 mas. Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel made a contribution in 1812 when he used a different method to measure distance. Assuming the orbital period of the two stars in the binary to be 400 years, he estimated the distance between the two this would require, and then measured the distance between the stars. This led to a value of 460 mas and he then followed this up with direct parallax measurements in a series of observations between 1815 and 1816, comparing it with six other stars. The two sets of measurements produced values of 760 and 1320 mas, all of these estimates, like earlier attempts by others, retained inaccuracies greater than the measurements. When Joseph von Fraunhofer invented a new type of heliometer, Bessel carried out another set of measurements using this device in 1837 and 1838 at Königsberg. He published his findings in 1838 with a value of 369. 0±19.1 mas to A and 260. 5±18.8 to B and this corresponds to a distance of about 600,000 astronomical units, or about 10.4 light-years. This was the first direct and reliable measurement of the distance to an other than the Sun. His measurement was published shortly before similar parallax measurements of Vega by Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve
19.
Friedrich Bessel
–
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was a German astronomer, mathematician, physicist and geodesist. He was the first astronomer who determined reliable values for the distance from the sun to another star by the method of parallax, a special type of mathematical functions were named Bessel functions after Bessels death, though they had originally been discovered by Daniel Bernoulli. Bessel was born in Minden, Westphalia, administrative center of Minden-Ravensberg and he was born into a large family in Germany. At the age of 14 Bessel was apprenticed to the import-export concern Kulenkamp at Bremen, the businesss reliance on cargo ships led him to turn his mathematical skills to problems in navigation. This in turn led to an interest in astronomy as a way of determining longitude, two years later Bessel left Kulenkamp and became Johann Hieronymus Schröters assistant at Lilienthal Observatory near Bremen. There he worked on James Bradleys stellar observations to produce precise positions for some 3,222 stars, in January 1810, at the age of 25, Bessel was appointed director of the newly founded Königsberg Observatory by King Frederick William III of Prussia. On the recommendation of fellow mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss he was awarded a doctor degree from the University of Göttingen in March 1811. Around that time, the two men engaged in an epistolary correspondence, however, when they met in person in 1825, they quarrelled, the details are not known. The physicist Franz Ernst Neumann, Bessels close companion and colleague, was married to Johanna Hagens sister Florentine, Neumann introduced Bessels exacting methods of measurement and data reduction into his mathematico-physical seminar, which he co-directed with Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi at Königsberg. These exacting methods had an impact upon the work of Neumanns students. Bessel had two sons and three daughters and his eldest daughter, Marie, married Georg Adolf Erman, member of the scholar family Erman. One of their sons was the renowned Egyptologist Adolf Erman, after several months of illness Bessel died in March 1846 at his observatory from retroperitoneal fibrosis. While the observatory was still in construction Bessel elaborated the Fundamenta Astronomiae based on Bradleys observations, as a preliminary result he produced tables of atmospheric refraction that won him the Lalande Prize from the French Academy of Sciences in 1811. The Königsberg Observatory began operation in 1813, starting in 1819, Bessel determined the position of over 50,000 stars using a meridian circle from Reichenbach, assisted by some of his qualified students. The most prominent of them was Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander, with this work done, Bessel was able to achieve the feat for which he is best remembered today, he is credited with being the first to use parallax in calculating the distance to a star. In 1838 Bessel won the race, announcing that 61 Cygni had a parallax of 0.314 arcseconds, given the current measurement of 11.4 ly, Bessels figure had an error of 9. 6%. Nearly at the same time Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve and Thomas Henderson measured the parallaxes of Vega and his announcement of Siriuss dark companion in 1844 was the first correct claim of a previously unobserved companion by positional measurement, and eventually led to the discovery of Sirius B. In 1824, Bessel developed a new method for calculation the circumstances of eclipses using the so-called Besselian elements and his method simplified the calculation to such an extent, without sacrificing accuracy, that it is still in use today
20.
Star
–
A star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, many other stars are visible to the naked eye from Earth during the night, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their immense distance from Earth. Historically, the most prominent stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms, astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. However, most of the stars in the Universe, including all stars outside our galaxy, indeed, most are invisible from Earth even through the most powerful telescopes. Almost all naturally occurring elements heavier than helium are created by stellar nucleosynthesis during the stars lifetime, near the end of its life, a star can also contain degenerate matter. Astronomers can determine the mass, age, metallicity, and many properties of a star by observing its motion through space, its luminosity. The total mass of a star is the factor that determines its evolution. Other characteristics of a star, including diameter and temperature, change over its life, while the environment affects its rotation. A plot of the temperature of stars against their luminosities produces a plot known as a Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. Plotting a particular star on that allows the age and evolutionary state of that star to be determined. A stars life begins with the collapse of a gaseous nebula of material composed primarily of hydrogen, along with helium. When the stellar core is sufficiently dense, hydrogen becomes steadily converted into helium through nuclear fusion, the remainder of the stars interior carries energy away from the core through a combination of radiative and convective heat transfer processes. The stars internal pressure prevents it from collapsing further under its own gravity, a star with mass greater than 0.4 times the Suns will expand to become a red giant when the hydrogen fuel in its core is exhausted. In some cases, it will fuse heavier elements at the core or in shells around the core, as the star expands it throws a part of its mass, enriched with those heavier elements, into the interstellar environment, to be recycled later as new stars. Meanwhile, the core becomes a remnant, a white dwarf. Binary and multi-star systems consist of two or more stars that are bound and generally move around each other in stable orbits. When two such stars have a close orbit, their gravitational interaction can have a significant impact on their evolution. Stars can form part of a much larger gravitationally bound structure, historically, stars have been important to civilizations throughout the world
21.
Jupiter
–
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants, the other two giant planets, Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. Jupiter has been known to astronomers since antiquity, the Romans named it after their god Jupiter. Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium and it may also have a rocky core of heavier elements, but like the other giant planets, Jupiter lacks a well-defined solid surface. Because of its rotation, the planets shape is that of an oblate spheroid. The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence, a prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. Surrounding Jupiter is a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere, Jupiter has at least 67 moons, including the four large Galilean moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these, has a greater than that of the planet Mercury. Jupiter has been explored on several occasions by robotic spacecraft, most notably during the early Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions and later by the Galileo orbiter. In late February 2007, Jupiter was visited by the New Horizons probe, the latest probe to visit the planet is Juno, which entered into orbit around Jupiter on July 4,2016. Future targets for exploration in the Jupiter system include the probable ice-covered liquid ocean of its moon Europa, Earth and its neighbor planets may have formed from fragments of planets after collisions with Jupiter destroyed those super-Earths near the Sun. Astronomers have discovered nearly 500 planetary systems with multiple planets, Jupiter moving out of the inner Solar System would have allowed the formation of inner planets, including Earth. Jupiter is composed primarily of gaseous and liquid matter and it is the largest of the four giant planets in the Solar System and hence its largest planet. It has a diameter of 142,984 km at its equator, the average density of Jupiter,1.326 g/cm3, is the second highest of the giant planets, but lower than those of the four terrestrial planets. Jupiters upper atmosphere is about 88–92% hydrogen and 8–12% helium by percent volume of gas molecules, a helium atom has about four times as much mass as a hydrogen atom, so the composition changes when described as the proportion of mass contributed by different atoms. Thus, Jupiters atmosphere is approximately 75% hydrogen and 24% helium by mass, the atmosphere contains trace amounts of methane, water vapor, ammonia, and silicon-based compounds. There are also traces of carbon, ethane, hydrogen sulfide, neon, oxygen, phosphine, the outermost layer of the atmosphere contains crystals of frozen ammonia. The interior contains denser materials - by mass it is roughly 71% hydrogen, 24% helium, through infrared and ultraviolet measurements, trace amounts of benzene and other hydrocarbons have also been found
22.
Apparent magnitude
–
The apparent magnitude of a celestial object is a number that is a measure of its brightness as seen by an observer on Earth. The brighter an object appears, the lower its magnitude value, the Sun, at apparent magnitude of −27, is the brightest object in the sky. It is adjusted to the value it would have in the absence of the atmosphere, furthermore, the magnitude scale is logarithmic, a difference of one in magnitude corresponds to a change in brightness by a factor of 5√100, or about 2.512. The measurement of apparent magnitudes or brightnesses of celestial objects is known as photometry, apparent magnitudes are used to quantify the brightness of sources at ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths. An apparent magnitude is measured in a specific passband corresponding to some photometric system such as the UBV system. In standard astronomical notation, an apparent magnitude in the V filter band would be denoted either as mV or often simply as V, the scale used to indicate magnitude originates in the Hellenistic practice of dividing stars visible to the naked eye into six magnitudes. The brightest stars in the sky were said to be of first magnitude, whereas the faintest were of sixth magnitude. Each grade of magnitude was considered twice the brightness of the following grade and this rather crude scale for the brightness of stars was popularized by Ptolemy in his Almagest, and is generally believed to have originated with Hipparchus. This implies that a star of magnitude m is 2.512 times as bright as a star of magnitude m +1 and this figure, the fifth root of 100, became known as Pogsons Ratio. The zero point of Pogsons scale was defined by assigning Polaris a magnitude of exactly 2. However, with the advent of infrared astronomy it was revealed that Vegas radiation includes an Infrared excess presumably due to a disk consisting of dust at warm temperatures. At shorter wavelengths, there is negligible emission from dust at these temperatures, however, in order to properly extend the magnitude scale further into the infrared, this peculiarity of Vega should not affect the definition of the magnitude scale. Therefore, the scale was extrapolated to all wavelengths on the basis of the black body radiation curve for an ideal stellar surface at 11000 K uncontaminated by circumstellar radiation. On this basis the spectral irradiance for the zero magnitude point, with the modern magnitude systems, brightness over a very wide range is specified according to the logarithmic definition detailed below, using this zero reference. In practice such apparent magnitudes do not exceed 30, astronomers have developed other photometric zeropoint systems as alternatives to the Vega system. The AB magnitude zeropoint is defined such that an objects AB, the dimmer an object appears, the higher the numerical value given to its apparent magnitude, with a difference of 5 magnitudes corresponding to a brightness factor of exactly 100. Since an increase of 5 magnitudes corresponds to a decrease in brightness by a factor of exactly 100, each magnitude increase implies a decrease in brightness by the factor 5√100 ≈2.512. Inverting the above formula, a magnitude difference m1 − m2 = Δm implies a brightness factor of F2 F1 =100 Δ m 5 =100.4 Δ m ≈2.512 Δ m
23.
Comet
–
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to evolve gasses, a process called outgassing. This produces an atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are due to the effects of radiation and the solar wind acting upon the nucleus of the comet. Comet nuclei range from a few hundred metres to tens of kilometres across and are composed of collections of ice, dust. The coma may be up to 15 times the Earths diameter, if sufficiently bright, a comet may be seen from the Earth without the aid of a telescope and may subtend an arc of 30° across the sky. Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures, Comets usually have highly eccentric elliptical orbits, and they have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from several years to potentially several millions of years. Short-period comets originate in the Kuiper belt or its associated scattered disc, long-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud, a spherical cloud of icy bodies extending from outside the Kuiper belt to halfway to the nearest star. Long-period comets are set in motion towards the Sun from the Oort cloud by gravitational perturbations caused by passing stars, hyperbolic comets may pass once through the inner Solar System before being flung to interstellar space. The appearance of a comet is called an apparition, Comets are distinguished from asteroids by the presence of an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere surrounding their central nucleus. This atmosphere has parts termed the coma and the tail, however, extinct comets that have passed close to the Sun many times have lost nearly all of their volatile ices and dust and may come to resemble small asteroids. Asteroids are thought to have a different origin from comets, having formed inside the orbit of Jupiter rather than in the outer Solar System, the discovery of main-belt comets and active centaur minor planets has blurred the distinction between asteroids and comets. As of November 2014 there are 5,253 known comets, however, this represents only a tiny fraction of the total potential comet population, as the reservoir of comet-like bodies in the outer Solar System is estimated to be one trillion. Roughly one comet per year is visible to the eye, though many of those are faint. Particularly bright examples are called Great Comets, the word comet derives from the Old English cometa from the Latin comēta or comētēs. That, in turn, is a latinisation of the Greek κομήτης, Κομήτης was derived from κομᾶν, which was itself derived from κόμη and was used to mean the tail of a comet. The astronomical symbol for comets is ☄, consisting of a disc with three hairlike extensions. The solid, core structure of a comet is known as the nucleus, cometary nuclei are composed of an amalgamation of rock, dust, water ice, and frozen gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and ammonia. As such, they are described as dirty snowballs after Fred Whipples model
24.
Barnaba Oriani
–
Barnaba Oriani was an Italian priest, geodesist, astronomer and scientist. Oriani was born in Garegnano, the son of a mason, after completing his studies in the humanities, physical and mathematical sciences, philosophy, and theology, he was ordained as a priest in 1775. When Napoleon I established the Republic of Lombardy, Oriani refused to swear an oath against the monarchy, and he was retained in his position at the observatory and was made president of the commission appointed to regulate the new system of weights and measures. Oriani was a friend of the Theatine monk, Giuseppe Piazzi. Oriani and Piazzi worked together for years, cooperating on many astronomical observations. Given his strong interest in astronomy, Oriani was appointed on the staff of the Observatory of Brera in Milan in 1776, becoming assistant astronomer in 1778, in 1778 he began publishing various in-depth dissertations on astronomical objects, the Effemeridi di Milano. A very capable astronomer, Orianis work began to attract considerable attention, Oriani devoted significant time to observations of Uranus, calculating its orbital properties, which he published as a booklet of tables in 1793. After others had shown that Uranus was not on a parabolic orbit but rather in a circular orbit. In 1789, Oriani improved his calculations by accounting for the effects of Jupiter. For his work in astronomy, Oriani was honored by naming asteroid Oriani and this asteroid had been discovered at the Osservatorio San Vittore in Bologna, Italy on November 6,1988. In De refractionibus astronomicis, Oriani showed that astronomical refraction could be expanded as a series of odd powers of, such a series had previously been derived by J. H. Lambert, who dropped all but the first term. However, Oriani investigated the higher terms, and he found that neither of the first two terms depended on the structure of the atmosphere, the series expansion he obtained was effective at up to 85 degrees from the zenith. Unlike previous approximations, however, Orianis two-term expression did not depend on a hypothesis regarding atmospheric temperature or air density in relation to altitude, thus, the effects of atmospheric curvature are only dependent upon the temperature and pressure at the location of the observer
25.
Milan
–
Milan is a city in Italy, capital of the Lombardy region, and the most populous metropolitan area and the second most populous comune in Italy. The population of the city proper is 1,351,000, Milan has a population of about 8,500,000 people. It is the industrial and financial centre of Italy and one of global significance. In terms of GDP, it has the largest economy among European non-capital cities, Milan is considered part of the Blue Banana and lies at the heart of one of the Four Motors for Europe. Milan is an Alpha leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, design, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, services, research, and tourism. Its business district hosts Italys Stock Exchange and the headquarters of the largest national and international banks, the city is a major world fashion and design capital, well known for several international events and fairs, including Milan Fashion Week and the Milan Furniture Fair. The city hosts numerous cultural institutions, academies and universities, with 11% of the national total enrolled students, Milans museums, theatres and landmarks attract over 9 million visitors annually. Milan – after Naples – is the second Italian city with the highest number of accredited stars from the Michelin Guide, the city hosted the Universal Exposition in 1906 and 2015. Milan is home to two of Europes major football teams, A. C. Milan and F. C. Internazionale, the etymology of Milan is uncertain. One theory holds that the Latin name Mediolanum comes from the Latin words medio, however, some scholars believe lanum comes from the Celtic root lan, meaning an enclosure or demarcated territory in which Celtic communities used to build shrines. Hence, Mediolanum could signify the central town or sanctuary of a Celtic tribe, indeed, the name Mediolanum is borne by about sixty Gallo-Roman sites in France, e. g. Saintes and Évreux. Alciato credits Ambrose for his account, around 400 BC, the Celtic Insubres settled Milan and the surrounding region. In 222 BC, the Romans conquered the settlement, renaming it Mediolanum, Milan was eventually declared the capital of the Western Roman Empire by Emperor Diocletian in 286 AD. Diocletian chose to stay in the Eastern Roman Empire and his colleague Maximianus ruled the Western one, immediately Maximian built several monuments, such as a large circus 470 m ×85 m, the Thermae Herculeae, a large complex of imperial palaces and several other buildings. With the Edict of Milan of 313, Emperor Constantine I guaranteed freedom of religion for Christians, after the city was besieged by the Visigoths in 402, the imperial residence was moved to Ravenna. In 452, the Huns overran the city, in 539, the Ostrogoths conquered and destroyed Milan during the Gothic War against Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. In the summer of 569, a Teutonic tribe, the Lombards, conquered Milan, some Roman structures remained in use in Milan under Lombard rule. Milan surrendered to the Franks in 774 when Charlemagne took the title of King of the Lombards, the Iron Crown of Lombardy dates from this period
26.
Sun
–
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99. 86% of the total mass of the Solar System. About three quarters of the Suns mass consists of hydrogen, the rest is mostly helium, with smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon. The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star based on its spectral class and it formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into a disk that became the Solar System. The central mass became so hot and dense that it eventually initiated nuclear fusion in its core and it is thought that almost all stars form by this process. The Sun is roughly middle-aged, it has not changed dramatically for more than four billion years and it is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large enough to engulf the current orbits of Mercury, Venus, and probably Earth. The enormous effect of the Sun on Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times, the synodic rotation of Earth and its orbit around the Sun are the basis of the solar calendar, which is the predominant calendar in use today. The English proper name Sun developed from Old English sunne and may be related to south, all Germanic terms for the Sun stem from Proto-Germanic *sunnōn. The English weekday name Sunday stems from Old English and is ultimately a result of a Germanic interpretation of Latin dies solis, the Latin name for the Sun, Sol, is not common in general English language use, the adjectival form is the related word solar. The term sol is used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on another planet. A mean Earth solar day is approximately 24 hours, whereas a mean Martian sol is 24 hours,39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. From at least the 4th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the Sun was worshipped as the god Ra, portrayed as a falcon-headed divinity surmounted by the solar disk, and surrounded by a serpent. In the New Empire period, the Sun became identified with the dung beetle, in the form of the Sun disc Aten, the Sun had a brief resurgence during the Amarna Period when it again became the preeminent, if not only, divinity for the Pharaoh Akhenaton. The Sun is viewed as a goddess in Germanic paganism, Sól/Sunna, in ancient Roman culture, Sunday was the day of the Sun god. It was adopted as the Sabbath day by Christians who did not have a Jewish background, the symbol of light was a pagan device adopted by Christians, and perhaps the most important one that did not come from Jewish traditions
27.
Orbit
–
In physics, an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object around a point in space, for example the orbit of a planet about a star or a natural satellite around a planet. Normally, orbit refers to a regularly repeating path around a body, to a close approximation, planets and satellites follow elliptical orbits, with the central mass being orbited at a focal point of the ellipse, as described by Keplers laws of planetary motion. For ease of calculation, in most situations orbital motion is adequately approximated by Newtonian Mechanics, historically, the apparent motions of the planets were described by European and Arabic philosophers using the idea of celestial spheres. This model posited the existence of perfect moving spheres or rings to which the stars and it assumed the heavens were fixed apart from the motion of the spheres, and was developed without any understanding of gravity. After the planets motions were accurately measured, theoretical mechanisms such as deferent. Originally geocentric it was modified by Copernicus to place the sun at the centre to help simplify the model, the model was further challenged during the 16th century, as comets were observed traversing the spheres. The basis for the understanding of orbits was first formulated by Johannes Kepler whose results are summarised in his three laws of planetary motion. Second, he found that the speed of each planet is not constant, as had previously been thought. Third, Kepler found a relationship between the orbital properties of all the planets orbiting the Sun. For the planets, the cubes of their distances from the Sun are proportional to the squares of their orbital periods. Jupiter and Venus, for example, are respectively about 5.2 and 0.723 AU distant from the Sun, their orbital periods respectively about 11.86 and 0.615 years. The proportionality is seen by the fact that the ratio for Jupiter,5. 23/11.862, is equal to that for Venus,0. 7233/0.6152. Idealised orbits meeting these rules are known as Kepler orbits, isaac Newton demonstrated that Keplers laws were derivable from his theory of gravitation and that, in general, the orbits of bodies subject to gravity were conic sections. Newton showed that, for a pair of bodies, the sizes are in inverse proportion to their masses. Where one body is more massive than the other, it is a convenient approximation to take the center of mass as coinciding with the center of the more massive body. Lagrange developed a new approach to Newtonian mechanics emphasizing energy more than force, in a dramatic vindication of classical mechanics, in 1846 le Verrier was able to predict the position of Neptune based on unexplained perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. This led astronomers to recognize that Newtonian mechanics did not provide the highest accuracy in understanding orbits, in relativity theory, orbits follow geodesic trajectories which are usually approximated very well by the Newtonian predictions but the differences are measurable. Essentially all the evidence that can distinguish between the theories agrees with relativity theory to within experimental measurement accuracy
28.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
–
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was born on 30 April 1777 in Brunswick, in the Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, as the son of poor working-class parents. Gauss later solved this puzzle about his birthdate in the context of finding the date of Easter and he was christened and confirmed in a church near the school he attended as a child. A contested story relates that, when he was eight, he figured out how to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100, there are many other anecdotes about his precocity while a toddler, and he made his first ground-breaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager. He completed Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, his opus, in 1798 at the age of 21. This work was fundamental in consolidating number theory as a discipline and has shaped the field to the present day, while at university, Gauss independently rediscovered several important theorems. Gauss was so pleased by this result that he requested that a regular heptadecagon be inscribed on his tombstone, the stonemason declined, stating that the difficult construction would essentially look like a circle. The year 1796 was most productive for both Gauss and number theory and he discovered a construction of the heptadecagon on 30 March. He further advanced modular arithmetic, greatly simplifying manipulations in number theory, on 8 April he became the first to prove the quadratic reciprocity law. This remarkably general law allows mathematicians to determine the solvability of any quadratic equation in modular arithmetic, the prime number theorem, conjectured on 31 May, gives a good understanding of how the prime numbers are distributed among the integers. Gauss also discovered that every integer is representable as a sum of at most three triangular numbers on 10 July and then jotted down in his diary the note, ΕΥΡΗΚΑ. On October 1 he published a result on the number of solutions of polynomials with coefficients in finite fields, in 1831 Gauss developed a fruitful collaboration with the physics professor Wilhelm Weber, leading to new knowledge in magnetism and the discovery of Kirchhoffs circuit laws in electricity. It was during this time that he formulated his namesake law and they constructed the first electromechanical telegraph in 1833, which connected the observatory with the institute for physics in Göttingen. In 1840, Gauss published his influential Dioptrische Untersuchungen, in which he gave the first systematic analysis on the formation of images under a paraxial approximation. Among his results, Gauss showed that under a paraxial approximation an optical system can be characterized by its cardinal points and he derived the Gaussian lens formula. In 1845, he became associated member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, in 1854, Gauss selected the topic for Bernhard Riemanns Habilitationvortrag, Über die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen. On the way home from Riemanns lecture, Weber reported that Gauss was full of praise, Gauss died in Göttingen, on 23 February 1855 and is interred in the Albani Cemetery there. Two individuals gave eulogies at his funeral, Gausss son-in-law Heinrich Ewald and Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen and his brain was preserved and was studied by Rudolf Wagner who found its mass to be 1,492 grams and the cerebral area equal to 219,588 square millimeters. Highly developed convolutions were also found, which in the early 20th century were suggested as the explanation of his genius, Gauss was a Lutheran Protestant, a member of the St. Albans Evangelical Lutheran church in Göttingen
29.
Planet
–
The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, astrology, science, mythology, and religion. Several planets in the Solar System can be seen with the naked eye and these were regarded by many early cultures as divine, or as emissaries of deities. As scientific knowledge advanced, human perception of the planets changed, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union officially adopted a resolution defining planets within the Solar System. This definition is controversial because it excludes many objects of mass based on where or what they orbit. The planets were thought by Ptolemy to orbit Earth in deferent, at about the same time, by careful analysis of pre-telescopic observation data collected by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler found the planets orbits were not circular but elliptical. As observational tools improved, astronomers saw that, like Earth, the planets rotated around tilted axes, and some shared such features as ice caps and seasons. Since the dawn of the Space Age, close observation by space probes has found that Earth and the planets share characteristics such as volcanism, hurricanes, tectonics. Planets are generally divided into two types, large low-density giant planets, and smaller rocky terrestrials. Under IAU definitions, there are eight planets in the Solar System, in order of increasing distance from the Sun, they are the four terrestrials, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, then the four giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Six of the planets are orbited by one or more natural satellites, several thousands of planets around other stars have been discovered in the Milky Way. e. in the habitable zone. On December 20,2011, the Kepler Space Telescope team reported the discovery of the first Earth-sized extrasolar planets, Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, orbiting a Sun-like star, Kepler-20. A2012 study, analyzing gravitational microlensing data, estimates an average of at least 1.6 bound planets for every star in the Milky Way, around one in five Sun-like stars is thought to have an Earth-sized planet in its habitable zone. The idea of planets has evolved over its history, from the lights of antiquity to the earthly objects of the scientific age. The concept has expanded to include not only in the Solar System. The ambiguities inherent in defining planets have led to much scientific controversy, the five classical planets, being visible to the naked eye, have been known since ancient times and have had a significant impact on mythology, religious cosmology, and ancient astronomy. In ancient times, astronomers noted how certain lights moved across the sky, as opposed to the fixed stars, ancient Greeks called these lights πλάνητες ἀστέρες or simply πλανῆται, from which todays word planet was derived. In ancient Greece, China, Babylon, and indeed all pre-modern civilizations, it was almost universally believed that Earth was the center of the Universe and that all the planets circled Earth. The first civilization known to have a theory of the planets were the Babylonians
30.
Roman mythology
–
Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Romes legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. Roman mythology may also refer to the study of these representations. The Romans usually treated their traditional narratives as historical, even when these have miraculous or supernatural elements, the stories are often concerned with politics and morality, and how an individuals personal integrity relates to his or her responsibility to the community or Roman state. When the stories illuminate Roman religious practices, they are concerned with ritual, augury. Romes early myths and legends also have a relationship with Etruscan religion. In particular, the versions of Greek myths in Ovids Metamorphoses, written during the reign of Augustus, because ritual played the central role in Roman religion that myth did for the Greeks, it is sometimes doubted that the Romans had much of a native mythology. This perception is a product of Romanticism and the scholarship of the 19th century. From the Renaissance to the 18th century, however, Roman myths were an inspiration particularly for European painting, the Roman tradition is rich in historical myths, or legends, concerning the foundation and rise of the city. These narratives focus on human actors, with only occasional intervention from deities, in Romes earliest period, history and myth have a mutual and complementary relationship. As T. P. Wiseman notes, The Roman stories still matter, as they mattered to Dante in 1300 and Shakespeare in 1600, what does it take to be a free citizen. Can a superpower still be a republic, how does well-meaning authority turn into murderous tyranny. Major sources for Roman myth include the Aeneid of Vergil and the first few books of Livys history as well as Dionysius s Roman Antiquities. Other important sources are the Fasti of Ovid, a six-book poem structured by the Roman religious calendar, scenes from Roman myth also appear in Roman wall painting, coins, and sculpture, particularly reliefs. The Aeneid and Livys early history are the best extant sources for Romes founding myths, material from Greek heroic legend was grafted onto this native stock at an early date. By extension, the Trojans were adopted as the ancestors of the Roman people. Rape of the Sabine women, explaining the importance of the Sabines in the formation of Roman culture, numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome who consorted with the nymph Egeria and established many of Romes legal and religious institutions. Servius Tullius, the king of Rome, whose mysterious origins were freely mythologized. The Tarpeian Rock, and why it was used for the execution of traitors, lucretia, whose self-sacrifice prompted the overthrow of the early Roman monarchy and led to the establishment of the Republic
31.
Ceres (mythology)
–
In ancient Roman religion, Ceres was a goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and motherly relationships. She was originally the central deity in Romes so-called plebeian or Aventine Triad and her seven-day April festival of Cerealia included the popular Ludi Ceriales. She was also honoured in the May lustratio of the fields at the Ambarvalia festival, at harvest-time, Ceres is the only one of Romes many agricultural deities to be listed among the Dii Consentes, Romes equivalent to the Twelve Olympians of Greek mythology. The Romans saw her as the counterpart of the Greek goddess Demeter, whose mythology was reinterpreted for Ceres in Roman art and literature. Roman etymologists thought ceres derived from the Latin verb gerere, to bear, bring forth, produce, because the goddess was linked to pastoral, agricultural and human fertility. Archaic cults to Ceres are well-evidenced among Romes neighbours in the Regal period, including the ancient Latins, Oscans and Sabellians, an archaic Faliscan inscription of c.600 BC asks her to provide far, which was a dietary staple of the Mediterranean world. Throughout the Roman era, Ceres name was synonymous with grain and, by extension and she had the power to fertilise, multiply and fructify plant and animal seed, and her laws and rites protected all activities of the agricultural cycle. In January, Ceres was offered spelt wheat and a pregnant sow and this was almost certainly held before the annual sowing of grain. The divine portion of sacrifice was the entrails presented in an earthenware pot, in a rural context, Cato the Elder describes the offer to Ceres of a porca praecidanea. Before the harvest, she was offered a propitiary grain sample, Ovid tells that Ceres is content with little, provided that her offerings are casta. Ceres main festival, Cerealia, was held from mid to late April and it was organised by her plebeian aediles and included circus games. From c.175 BC, Cerealia included ludi scaenici through April 12 to 18, W. H. Roscher lists these deities among the indigitamenta, names used to invoke specific divine functions. The adult males of the party waited at the grooms house. A wedding sacrifice was offered to Tellus on the brides behalf, Varro describes the sacrifice of a pig as a worthy mark of weddings because our women, and especially nurses call the female genitalia porcus. Spaeth believes Ceres may have included in the sacrificial dedication, because she is closely identified with Tellus and, as Ceres legifera. In the most solemn form of marriage, confarreatio, the bride and groom shared a cake made of far, from at least the mid-republican era, an official, joint cult to Ceres and Proserpina reinforced Ceres connection with Roman ideals of female virtue. The promotion of this cult coincides with the rise of a nobility, an increased birthrate among plebeian commoners. Several of Ceres ancient Italic precursors are connected to fertility and motherhood
32.
Sicily
–
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is an autonomous Region of Italy, along with surrounding minor islands, Sicily is located in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula, from which it is separated by the narrow Strait of Messina. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, the island has a typical Mediterranean climate. The earliest archaeological evidence of activity on the island dates from as early as 12,000 BC. It became part of Italy in 1860 following the Expedition of the Thousand, a revolt led by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Italian unification, Sicily was given special status as an autonomous region after the Italian constitutional referendum of 1946. Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially regard to the arts, music, literature, cuisine. It is also home to important archaeological and ancient sites, such as the Necropolis of Pantalica, the Valley of the Temples, Sicily has a roughly triangular shape, earning it the name Trinacria. To the east, it is separated from the Italian mainland by the Strait of Messina, about 3 km wide in the north, and about 16 km wide in the southern part. The northern and southern coasts are each about 280 km long measured as a line, while the eastern coast measures around 180 km. The total area of the island is 25,711 km2, the terrain of inland Sicily is mostly hilly and is intensively cultivated wherever possible. Along the northern coast, the ranges of Madonie,2,000 m, Nebrodi,1,800 m. The cone of Mount Etna dominates the eastern coast, in the southeast lie the lower Hyblaean Mountains,1,000 m. The mines of the Enna and Caltanissetta districts were part of a leading sulphur-producing area throughout the 19th century, Sicily and its surrounding small islands have some highly active volcanoes. Mount Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and still casts black ash over the island with its ever-present eruptions and it currently stands 3,329 metres high, though this varies with summit eruptions, the mountain is 21 m lower now than it was in 1981. It is the highest mountain in Italy south of the Alps, Etna covers an area of 1,190 km2 with a basal circumference of 140 km. This makes it by far the largest of the three volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. In Greek Mythology, the deadly monster Typhon was trapped under the mountain by Zeus, Mount Etna is widely regarded as a cultural symbol and icon of Sicily. The Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the northeast of mainland Sicily form a volcanic complex, the three volcanoes of Vulcano, Vulcanello and Lipari are also currently active, although the latter is usually dormant
33.
Asteroid
–
Asteroids are minor planets, especially those of the inner Solar System. The larger ones have also been called planetoids and these terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disc of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet. As minor planets in the outer Solar System were discovered and found to have volatile-based surfaces that resemble those of comets, in this article, the term asteroid refers to the minor planets of the inner Solar System including those co-orbital with Jupiter. There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the remnants of planetesimals. The large majority of known asteroids orbit in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, or are co-orbital with Jupiter. However, other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth objects, individual asteroids are classified by their characteristic spectra, with the majority falling into three main groups, C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are identified with carbon-rich, metallic. The size of asteroids varies greatly, some reaching as much as 1000 km across, asteroids are differentiated from comets and meteoroids. In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition, while asteroids are composed of mineral and rock, comets are composed of dust. In addition, asteroids formed closer to the sun, preventing the development of the aforementioned cometary ice, the difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly one of size, meteoroids have a diameter of less than one meter, whereas asteroids have a diameter of greater than one meter. Finally, meteoroids can be composed of either cometary or asteroidal materials, only one asteroid,4 Vesta, which has a relatively reflective surface, is normally visible to the naked eye, and this only in very dark skies when it is favorably positioned. Rarely, small asteroids passing close to Earth may be visible to the eye for a short time. As of March 2016, the Minor Planet Center had data on more than 1.3 million objects in the inner and outer Solar System, the United Nations declared June 30 as International Asteroid Day to educate the public about asteroids. The date of International Asteroid Day commemorates the anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid impact over Siberia, the first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres, was found in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, and was originally considered to be a new planet. In the early half of the nineteenth century, the terms asteroid. Asteroid discovery methods have improved over the past two centuries. This task required that hand-drawn sky charts be prepared for all stars in the band down to an agreed-upon limit of faintness. On subsequent nights, the sky would be charted again and any moving object would, hopefully, the expected motion of the missing planet was about 30 seconds of arc per hour, readily discernible by observers
34.
Asteroid belt
–
The asteroid belt is the circumstellar disc in the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets, the asteroid belt is also termed the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids. About half the mass of the belt is contained in the four largest asteroids, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, the total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 4% that of the Moon, or 22% that of Pluto, and roughly twice that of Plutos moon Charon. Ceres, the belts only dwarf planet, is about 950 km in diameter, whereas Vesta, Pallas. The remaining bodies range down to the size of a dust particle, the asteroid material is so thinly distributed that numerous unmanned spacecraft have traversed it without incident. Nonetheless, collisions between large asteroids do occur, and these can form a family whose members have similar orbital characteristics. Individual asteroids within the belt are categorized by their spectra. The asteroid belt formed from the solar nebula as a group of planetesimals. Planetesimals are the precursors of the protoplanets. Between Mars and Jupiter, however, gravitational perturbations from Jupiter imbued the protoplanets with too much energy for them to accrete into a planet. Collisions became too violent, and instead of fusing together, the planetesimals, as a result,99. 9% of the asteroid belts original mass was lost in the first 100 million years of the Solar Systems history. Some fragments eventually found their way into the inner Solar System, Asteroid orbits continue to be appreciably perturbed whenever their period of revolution about the Sun forms an orbital resonance with Jupiter. At these orbital distances, a Kirkwood gap occurs as they are swept into other orbits. Classes of small Solar System bodies in other regions are the objects, the centaurs, the Kuiper belt objects, the scattered disc objects, the sednoids. On 22 January 2014, ESA scientists reported the detection, for the first definitive time, of water vapor on Ceres, the detection was made by using the far-infrared abilities of the Herschel Space Observatory. The finding was unexpected because comets, not asteroids, are considered to sprout jets. According to one of the scientists, The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids. This pattern, now known as the Titius–Bode law, predicted the semi-major axes of the six planets of the provided one allowed for a gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter
35.
Dwarf planet
–
A dwarf planet is a planetary-mass object that is neither a planet nor a natural satellite. The International Astronomical Union currently recognizes five dwarf planets, Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, another hundred or so known objects in the Solar System are suspected to be dwarf planets. Individual astronomers recognize several of these, and in August 2011 Mike Brown published a list of 390 candidate objects, Stern states that there are more than a dozen known dwarf planets. Only two of these bodies, Ceres and Pluto, have observed in enough detail to demonstrate that they actually fit the IAUs definition. The IAU accepted Eris as a dwarf planet because it is more massive than Pluto and they subsequently decided that unnamed trans-Neptunian objects with an absolute magnitude brighter than +1 are to be named under the assumption that they are dwarf planets. The classification of bodies in other systems with the characteristics of dwarf planets has not been addressed. Starting in 1801, astronomers discovered Ceres and other bodies between Mars and Jupiter which were for some decades considered to be planets. Between then and around 1851, when the number of planets had reached 23, astronomers started using the asteroid for the smaller bodies. With the discovery of Pluto in 1930, most astronomers considered the Solar System to have nine planets and it was roughly one-twentieth the mass of Mercury, which made Pluto by far the smallest planet. Although it was more than ten times as massive as the largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres. In the 1990s, astronomers began to find objects in the region of space as Pluto. Many of these shared several of Plutos key orbital characteristics, and Pluto started being seen as the largest member of a new class of objects and this led some astronomers to stop referring to Pluto as a planet. Several terms, including subplanet and planetoid, started to be used for the now known as dwarf planets. By 2005, three trans-Neptunian objects comparable in size to Pluto had been reported and it became clear that either they would also have to be classified as planets, or Pluto would have to be reclassified. Astronomers were also confident that more objects as large as Pluto would be discovered, Eris was discovered in January 2005, it was thought to be slightly larger than Pluto, and some reports informally referred to it as the tenth planet. As a consequence, the became a matter of intense debate during the IAU General Assembly in August 2006. The IAUs initial draft proposal included Charon, Eris, and Ceres in the list of planets, dropping Charon from the list, the new proposal also removed Pluto, Ceres, and Eris, because they have not cleared their orbits. The IAUs final Resolution 5A preserved this three-category system for the bodies orbiting the Sun
36.
Charles Piazzi Smyth
–
Charles Piazzi Smyth was born in Naples, Italy, to Captain William Henry Smyth and his wife Annarella. He was called Piazzi after his godfather, the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi and his father subsequently settled at Bedford and equipped there an observatory, at which Piazzi Smyth received his first lessons in astronomy. In 1846 he was appointed Astronomer Royal for Scotland, based at the Calton Hill Observatory in Edinburgh, shortly after his appointment, the observatory was placed under the control of Her Majestys Treasury and suffered from a long series of under-funding. Because of this, most of his work in astronomy was done elsewhere. Here he completed the reduction, and continued the series, of the observations made by his predecessor, in 1853, Smyth was responsible for installing the time ball on top of Nelsons Monument in Edinburgh to give a time signal to the ships at Edinburghs port of Leith. By 1861, this signal was augmented by the One OClock Gun at Edinburgh Castle. In 1704 Isaac Newton wrote in his book Opticks Book 1, cannot be so formed as to take away that confusion of the Rays which arises from the Tremors of the Atmosphere. The only Remedy is a most serene and quiet Air, such as may perhaps be found on the tops of the highest Mountains above the grosser Clouds. In South Africa he had spent many nights observing from mountain tops, the Admiralty approved his grant and he was offered the loan of further equipment from many sources. Robert Stephenson loaned his 140-ton yacht Titania for the expedition, mr. Hugh Pattinson loaned his refracting telescope of 7.5 inches. This was a Thomas Cooke equatorial with setting circles and a driving clock, the Crimean War had recently concluded and the army offered to lend tents. This offer was declined as Piazzi Smyth had already designed a tent with a sewn-in groundsheet based on his experience in South Africa, on this and all his subsequent trips he was accompanied by his wife whom he had married the previous year. In 1856, on reaching Tenerife they first set up camp on Mount Guajara and it was higher than all its neighbours and free from any volcanic activity. They took all their equipment up loaded on mules, except for the Pattinson telescope which was too bulky. They stayed there a month making astronomical, meteorological and geological observations and he made observations of the steadiness and clarity of star images with the 3. 6-inch Sheepshanks telescope and found both much better than at Edinburgh. He also made the first positive detection of heat coming from the Moon, unfortunately they were annoyed by frequent dust incursions which frequently blotted out the horizon. Even when the dust was at its worst, the transparency at the zenith was better than at Edinburgh. The dust was evidently confined to individual layers, so he decided to move to Alta Vista at 10,700 ft, on the slope of Teide
37.
William Henry Smyth
–
Admiral William Henry Smyth KFM DCL FRS FRAS FRGS FSA was an English naval officer, hydrographer, astronomer and numismatist. He is noted for his involvement in the history of a number of learned societies, for his hydrographic charts, for his astronomical work. William Smyth was born at 42 Great Peter Street, Westminster and he was the only son of Joseph Smyth and Georgina Caroline Pitt Pilkington, granddaughter of the Irish writer Laetitia Pilkington and her husband Matthew Pilkington, both protégés of Jonathan Swift. William Smyths father, Joseph Brewer Palmer Smyth, was born in 1737 in New Jersey, Joseph was a colonial American and a merchant and land owner in Knowlton, Sussex, New Jersey. He was a British loyalist and in January 1777 he was commissioned as Lt in the Kings Royal Regiment of New York, however, he escaped to Niagara at the start of the American Revolution. In November 1778 he sailed for New York, but was captured and he eventually reached Falmouth, Cornwall, in January,1779 in a most forlorn condition, destitute and suffering from fever and smallpox. In 1780 he married Georgina Pilkington in England and he was in Niagara in 1788. William Smyth, his son, was born on 21 January 1788, williams half brother was the famous painter and traveller Augustus Earle. William Smyth married Eliza Anne Annarella Warington in Messina on 7 October 1815, Smyth and Annarella had eleven children between 1816 and 1835. Their three sons were Charles Piazzi Smyth, Sir Warington Wilkinson Smyth and General Sir Henry Augustus Smyth. Of their eight daughters, two died young, a married and died aged 20, another also died at 20, unmarried. Their other three daughters were Henrietta Grace, who married Rev. Henry Toynbee and sailed out to Australia as a bride in 1855 and she died childless in 1881 aged 52 after a long illness. Smyth suffered an attack at his home near Aylesbury in early September 1865. On 8 September he showed the planet Jupiter to his grandson, Arthur Smyth Flower. He died a few later, in the early morning of the 9 September 1865. He was buried in the churchyard at Stone near Aylesbury, at the age of 14 Smyth ran away to join the merchant marine. In 1804 he was in the East India Companys ship Marquis Cornwallis, in February 1808 he followed Johnston to the Powerful, which, on returning to England, was part of the force in the expedition to the Scheldt, and was paid off in October 1809. Smyth afterwards served in the 74-gun Milford on the coast of France and Spain, in July 1811 he joined Rodney off Toulon, and through 1812 served on the coast of Spain
38.
Costantino Corti
–
Costantino Corti was a Milanese sculptor who exhibited at Brera and in Florence, London, and Paris. Corti was most noted for his colossal statue Lucifer and he also produced statues commemorating Federico Borromeo, Conrad of Swabia, and the astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi. Cortis marble Lucifer was commissioned by the Count dAquila, brother of the king of Naples. Dall Ongaro found the figure androgynous, in keeping with the view that gender came into existence only with the creation of human beings and was not a characteristic of angels. The sculpture received notice for its extraordinary vigor, cortis monument to Cardinal Borromeo was commissioned in 1861 for the plaza of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. The statue was completed in 1864, and dedicated the following year, the statue of Giuseppe Piazzi, dedicated in 1871, is located in the main plaza of Ponte in Valtellina, the astronomers birthplace. Clement, Clara Erskine, and Laurence Hutton, artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works, A Handbook. Houghton, Mifflin,1889, 5th ed. vol, dizionario della storia dellarte in Italia. Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, an 1886 photogravure print depicting Lucifer from a more startling angle may be viewed at the WebCite archive
Fox, William (1913). "Giuseppe Piazzi". In Herbermann, Charles. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Fox, William (1913). "
