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Brian Warner (astronomer)
Brian Warner (25 May 1939 – 5 May 2023) was a British South African optical astronomer who was Emeritus Distinguished Professor of natural philosophy at the University of Cape Town. Warner's research included cataclysmic variable stars, pulsars, degenerate stars and binary stars. He also researched and published on the history of astronomy in South Africa. Biography Early life and education Warner was born 25 May 1939 in Crawley Down, Sussex, England. His father was a gardener on a country estate and his mother was a charwoman. He didn't pass his eleven-plus exam, failing in mathematics, but was nonetheless admitted to the East Grinstead County Grammar School on the recommendation of his teacher. As a schoolboy he befriended the noted amateur astronomer Patrick Moore who lived nearby in East Grinstead where Warner and his friends would use Moore's telescope. Warner went to University College London (UCL) in 1958 to study undergraduate astronomy. As a stude ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crawley Down
Crawley Down is a small village in the Mid Sussex district of West Sussex, England. There is one church, one school, and a number of social groups. It lies seven miles from Gatwick Airport. The next nearest railway stations are Three Bridges and East Grinstead. Crawley Down lies in the northeast corner of West Sussex, just one mile from the border with Surrey. Crawley Down has a King George's Field in memorial to King George V. History Until the 17th century, the area now covered by the village was used by iron producers, who sold to the Woodcock hammer in Felbridge. Some small farms were set up in the 1600s, part of a pattern of enclosures in the area in the 17th and 18th centuries. A large manor, The Grange, was built for a London silversmith in the 18th century, and the settlement slowly grew, with a restart of ironworking to supply metal for guns to be used in wars with France. In the 19th century, after iron working had ceased, the local clay was mined for bricks. In the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academy Of Science Of South Africa
The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) is the national science academy in South Africa. It was started in 1996, and encompasses all fields of scientific work. Its legal foundation is the ''Academy of Science of South Africa Act'', Act 67 of 2001, which came into operation in May 2002. The ASSAf was inaugurated in March 1996 by the former President of South Africa and patron of the academy, Nelson Mandela. In 2021, the academy had 632 members. History For about one century, the national science 'academy' comprised two separate institutions – the Royal Society (from the UK) and the ''Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns'' (SAAWK). SAAWK had an Afrikaans-language focus and was heavily supported by South African business. Based in Pretoria, it was established in 1909 and was the national academy (the statute was passed in 1950) until democracy in 1994. It was structured in two 'faculties': human and natural sciences, with a journal for each. While it still a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Grinstead
East Grinstead is a town in West Sussex, England, near the East Sussex, Surrey, and Kent borders, south of London, northeast of Brighton, and northeast of the county town of Chichester. Situated in the extreme northeast of the county, the civil parish has an area of . The population at the 2011 Census was 26,383. Nearby towns include Crawley and Horley to the west, Tunbridge Wells to the east and Redhill and Reigate to the northwest. The town is contiguous with the village of Felbridge to the northwest. Until 1974 East Grinstead was in East Sussex, before joining together with Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill as the Mid-Sussex district of West Sussex. The town is on the Greenwich Meridian. It has many historic buildings, and the Weald and Ashdown Forest lie to the south-east. Places of interest The High Street contains one of the longest continuous runs of 14th-century timber-framed buildings in England. Other notable buildings in the town include Sackville College, the san ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patrick Moore
Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore (; 4 March 1923 – 9 December 2012) was an English amateur astronomer who attained prominence in that field as a writer, researcher, radio commentator and television presenter. Moore was president of the British Astronomical Association; co-founder and president of the Society for Popular Astronomy; author of over seventy books on astronomy; and presenter of the world's longest-running television series with the same original presenter, BBC's ''The Sky at Night'' (from 1957). He became known as a specialist in Moon observation and for creating the Caldwell catalogue. Idiosyncrasies such as his rapid diction and monocle made him a popular and instantly recognisable figure on British television. Outside his field of astronomy, Moore was known for his role on the video game television show '' GamesMaster''. Moore was also a self-taught xylophonist and pianist, as well as an accomplished composer. He was an amateur cricketer, golfer and chess pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amateur Astronomy
Amateur astronomy is a hobby where participants enjoy observing or imaging celestial objects in the sky using the unaided eye, binoculars, or telescopes. Even though scientific research may not be their primary goal, some amateur astronomers make contributions in doing citizen science, such as by monitoring variable stars, double stars, sunspots, or occultations of stars by the Moon or asteroids, or by discovering transient astronomical events, such as comets, galactic novae or supernovae in other galaxies. Amateur astronomers do not use the field of astronomy as their primary source of income or support, and usually have no professional degree in astrophysics or advanced academic training in the subject. Most amateurs are hobbyists, while others have a high degree of experience in astronomy and may often assist and work alongside professional astronomers. Many astronomers have studied the sky throughout history in an amateur framework; however, since the beginning of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eleven-plus
The eleven-plus (11+) is a standardized examination administered to some students in England and Northern Ireland in their last year of primary education, which governs admission to grammar schools and other secondary schools which use academic selection. The name derives from the age group for secondary entry: 11–12 years. The eleven-plus was once used throughout England and Wales, but is now only used in counties and boroughs in England that offer selective schools instead of comprehensive schools. Also known as the transfer test, it is especially associated with the Tripartite System which was in use from 1944 until it was phased out across most of the UK by 1976. The examination tests a student's ability to solve problems using a test of verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning, with most tests now also offering papers in mathematics and English. The intention was that the eleven-plus should be a general test for intelligence (cognitive ability) similar to an IQ test, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charwoman
A charwoman (also chargirl, charlady or char) is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. A charwoman might work independently, often for cash in hand, or might come through an employment agency. Before 1960, the term "charwoman" was used as an official job title by government agencies in the United States, including municipal and state governments and by federal agencies such as the Department of Commerce and Labor, the Bureau of the Census, and the Bureau of Immigration. Charwomen have also sometimes been referred to as "scrubwomen". The word has the same root as "chore woman", one hired to do odd chores around the house. In British English, "cleaner" is now used much more often. In American English, the term "maid" is often used for any woman who cle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Country Estate
An estate is a large parcel of land under single ownership, which would historically generate income for its owner. British context In the UK, historically an estate comprises the houses, outbuildings, supporting farmland, and woods that surround the gardens and grounds of a very large property, such as a country house, mansion, palace or castle. It is the modern term for a manor, but lacks a manor's now-abolished jurisdiction. The "estate" formed an economic system where the profits from its produce and rents (of housing or agricultural land) sustained the main household, formerly known as the manor house. Thus, "the estate" may refer to all other cottages and villages in the same ownership as the mansion itself, covering more than one former manor. Examples of such great estates are Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, England, and Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, England, built to replace the former manor house of Woodstock. In a more urban context are the "Great Estates" in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of Astronomy
Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, dating back to antiquity, with its origins in the religious, mythological, cosmological, calendrical, and astrological beliefs and practices of prehistory: vestiges of these are still found in astrology, a discipline long interwoven with public and governmental astronomy. It was not completely separated in Europe (see astrology and astronomy) during the Copernican Revolution starting in 1543. In some cultures, astronomical data was used for astrological prognostication. Early history Early cultures identified celestial objects with gods and spirits. They related these objects (and their movements) to phenomena such as rain, drought, seasons, and tides. It is generally believed that the first astronomers were priests, and that they understood celestial objects and events to be manifestations of the divine, hence early astronomy's connection to what is now called astrology. A 32,500-year-old carved ivory mammoth tusk could cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Binary Star
A binary star is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in which case they are called ''visual binaries''. Many visual binaries have long orbital periods of several centuries or millennia and therefore have orbits which are uncertain or poorly known. They may also be detected by indirect techniques, such as spectroscopy (''spectroscopic binaries'') or astrometry (''astrometric binaries''). If a binary star happens to orbit in a plane along our line of sight, its components will eclipse and transit each other; these pairs are called ''eclipsing binaries'', or, together with other binaries that change brightness as they orbit, ''photometric binaries''. If components in binary star systems are close enough they can gravitationally distort their mutual outer stellar atmospheres. In some cases, thes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Degenerate Stars
In astronomy, the term compact star (or compact object) refers collectively to white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. It would grow to include exotic stars if such hypothetical, dense bodies are confirmed to exist. All compact objects have a high mass relative to their radius, giving them a very high density, compared to ordinary atomic matter. Compact stars are often the endpoints of stellar evolution and, in this respect, are also called stellar remnants. The state and type of a stellar remnant depends primarily on the mass of the star that it formed from. The ambiguous term ''compact star'' is often used when the exact nature of the star is not known, but evidence suggests that it has a very small radius compared to ordinary stars. A compact star that is not a black hole may be called a degenerate star. In June 2020, astronomers reported narrowing down the source of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), which may now plausibly include "compact-object mergers and magnetars arising ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulsar
A pulsar (from ''pulsating radio source'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward Earth (similar to the way a lighthouse can be seen only when the light is pointed in the direction of an observer), and is responsible for the pulsed appearance of emission. Neutron stars are very dense and have short, regular rotational periods. This produces a very precise interval between pulses that ranges from milliseconds to seconds for an individual pulsar. Pulsars are one of the candidates for the source of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. (See also centrifugal mechanism of acceleration.) The periods of pulsars make them very useful tools for astronomers. Observations of a pulsar in a binary neutron star system were used to indirectly confirm the existence of gravitational radiation. The first extrasolar planets were discovered aroun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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