Dark Companions of Stars

1. Front Matter

   Pages 209-220

   PDF

2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 221-223

3. Our Cosmic Neighborhood

   1. The ‘Fixed’ Stars and the ‘Wandering’ Planets

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 225-230

   2. Stellar Motions

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 231-235

   3. Stellar Distances

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 236-243

   4. Stellar Parameters

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 244-250

   5. The Nearby Stars

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 251-257

   6. The Lower End of the Main Sequence

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 258-262

   7. Our Solar System

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 263-267

   8. Origins

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 268-275

4. Unseen Stars and Planets

   1. Historical I

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 276-280

   2. Historical II

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 281-289

   3. Perturbations

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 290-296

   4. Perturbations. Early mostly Photographic Studies

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 297-300

   5. Perturbations. Current Photographic Studies

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 301-304

   6. Two Cases of Serendipity: Ross 614 and VW Cephei

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 305-311

   7. Astrometric Study of Barnard’s Star

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 312-322

   8. Epilogue

      • Peter Van De Kamp

      Pages 323-327

If you want to understand the invisible, look careful at the visible. The Talmud A 'bird's eye' or rather a distant spacecraft's view of the solar system reveals an assembly of planets, terrestrial, giant and Pluto. The orbital motions are in the same sense, counter clockwise, as seen from the north of the general flattened space within which the planetary motions are confined. This state of affairs is corevolving and, more or less, coplanar. The rotations are in the same sense as the revolutions, with the strikiiig exception of Uranus whose sense of rotation is perpendicular to its plane of revolution. As time goes by, most of the planets remain fairly close to a general plane and at no time stray unduly far from it; they remain confined within a rather narrow box or disk with a large 'equatorial' extent. The most distant planet, Pluto, requires a diameter of some 80 astronomical units for the disk. One astronomical unit is the distance of the Earth to the Sun, to be more precise the length of half the major axis of the Earth's slightly elliptical orbit around the Sun, and amounts to nearly 149600000 km.

• Galaxy
• astrometry
• astronomy
• earth
• gravitation
• gravity
• planet
• solar system
• star
• stellar
• sun

`This book is extremely well conceived and written and will amply reward each interested reader.' Astronautical Society News Bulletin, August 1987

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