Publications – Lynne's Lair

Articles

Date	Author(s)	Title(s)	Book/Journal
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Astronomers’ Stars: Going Out with a Bang	Yearbook of Astronomy 2030
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	Gone But Not Forgotten: Sceptrum Brandenburgicum	Yearbook of Astronomy 2030
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Astronomers’ Stars: Amateur Hour	Yearbook of Astronomy 2029
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	Gone But Not Forgotten: Felis	Yearbook of Astronomy 2029
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Astronomers’ Stars: The Inconstant Stars	Yearbook of Astronomy 2028
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	Gone But Not Forgotten: Quadrans Muralis	Yearbook of Astronomy 2028
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Astronomers’ Stars: Across the Spectrum	Yearbook of Astronomy 2027
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	Gone But Not Forgotten: Corona Meridiana	Yearbook of Astronomy 2027
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Astronomers’ Stars: Taking It to Extremes	Yearbook of Astronomy 2026
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	Gone But Not Forgotten: Argo Navis	Yearbook of Astronomy 2026
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Astronomers’ Stars: The Terrible Twos	Yearbook of Astronomy 2025
	Stockman, Lynne Marie	Gone But Not Forgotten: Anser	Yearbook of Astronomy 2025
2023	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Astronomers’ Stars: In the Neighbourhood	Yearbook of Astronomy 2024, 298–305
2023	Stockman, Lynne Marie	Gone But Not Forgotten: Musca Borealis	Yearbook of Astronomy 2024, 163–166
2023	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Planets in 2024, Lunar Occultations in 2024, Monthly Sky Notes	Yearbook of Astronomy 2024, 78–80, 87–88, 91–169
2022	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Astronomers’ Stars: Life in the Fast Lane	Yearbook of Astronomy 2023, 258–268
2022	Stockman, Lynne Marie, Harper, David	Shining a Light on Jupiter’s Atmosphere	Yearbook of Astronomy 2023, 141–143
2022	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Planets in 2023, Some Events in 2023, Monthly Sky Notes	Yearbook of Astronomy 2023, 78–80, 89–93, 95–165
2021	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Astronomers’ Stars: A Study in Scarlet	Yearbook of Astronomy 2022, 238–248
2021	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Planets in 2022, Some Events in 2022, Monthly Sky Notes	Yearbook of Astronomy 2022, 78–80, 81–83, 87–165
2020	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Planets in 2021, Some Events in 2021, Monthly Sky Notes	Yearbook of Astronomy 2021, 78–80, 83–85, 87–178
2019	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Planets in 2020, Some Events in 2020, Monthly Sky Notes	Yearbook of Astronomy 2020, 78–80, 84–86, 87–182
2018	Stockman, Lynne Marie	The Planets in 2019, Some Events in 2019, Monthly Sky Notes	Yearbook of Astronomy 2019, 76–77, 80–82, 83–146
2017	Stockman, Lynne Marie	Monthly Sky Notes	Yearbook of Astronomy 2018, 79–141
1999	Roxburgh, Ian W., Stockman, Lynne M.	Power series solutions of the polytope equations	Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 303, 466–470
1990	Stockman, Lynne Marie	Unstructured Sparse Matrix Dense Vector Multiplication on the DAP	Master of Science Degree Project, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London

Abstracts

The Astronomers’ Stars

Yearbook of Astronomy 2022, 2023

The stars are ours. Their names reflect our religions, our stories, our calendars, our histories. Some are millennia old, their very origins lost in antiquity; others are of a more recent origin. ŠAR.GAZ (Sargas, θ Scorpii) is the mighty weapon of the Mesopotamian god ^dAMAR.UTU (Marduk), patron of the city of Babylon. Perseus, hero and legendary founder of Mycenae, slew the Gorgon Medusa; Raʾas al-Ghūl (Algol, β Persei) marks the baleful blinking eye in the head of the ghoul. The heliacal rising of the brightest star in the night sky, Σείριος (Sirius, α Canis Majoris), predicts the onset of the hot, dry days of summer in Greece and the annual flooding of the Nile in Egypt. And Cor Caroli (α Canum Venaticorum), Latin for ‘the heart of Charles’, remembers the execution of English King Charles I in the mid-seventeenth century.

We looked for patterns in the night skies and we named the brightest stars. But some of the stars, most of the stars, evaded our ancestors’ detection. They were transient or faint or otherwise overlooked, and often it took careful and dedicated observation and measurement, sometimes over many years, to bring them into the light. These are the astronomers’ stars.

Star	Astronomer(s)	Year(s)	Article
Anthelme’s Star	Voituret Anthelme	1670	Going Out with a Bang
Argelander’s Second Star	Friedrich W.A. Argelander	1857	Life in the Fast Lane
Argelander’s Star	Friedrich W.A. Argelander	1841	Life in the Fast Lane
Babcock’s Magnetic Star	Horace W. Babcock	1960	Taking It To Extremes
Barnard’s Star	Edward E. Barnard	1916	Life in the Fast Lane
Becklin-Neugebauer Object	Eric E. Becklin, Gerhart Neubegauer	1967	Taking It To Extremes
Bessel’s Star, Piazzi’s Flying Star	Friedrich W. Bessell, Guiseppe Piazzi	1838, 1803	Life in the Fast Lane
Bidelman’s Helium Variable Star	William P. Bidelman	1965	Across the Spectrum
Bidelman’s Peculiar Star	William P. Bidelman	1950	Across the Spectrum
Bond’s Flare Star	Howard E. Bond	1976	The Inconstant Stars
Boyajian’s Star, Tabby’s Star	Tabetha S. Boyajian	2016	Amateur Hour
Branchett’s Object	David Branchett	1981	Amateur Hour
Butler’s Flare Star	Christopher J. Butler	1966	The Inconstant Stars
Caffau’s Star	Elisabetta Caffau	2011	Across the Spectrum
Campbell’s Hydrogen Star	William W. Campbell	1893	Across the Spectrum
Cayrel’s Star	Roger Cayrel	2001	Across the Spectrum
Chanal’s Object	Roger Chanal	1984	Amateur Hour
Chèvremont’s Variable Star	A. Chèvremont	1897	Amateur Hour
Dahlgren’s Nova	Elis Dahlgren	1963	Amateur Hour
Herschel’s Garnet Star	F. William Herschel	1783	A Study in Scarlet
Herschel’s Ruby Star	John F.W. Herschel	1847	A Study in Scarlet
Hind’s Crimson Star	John R. Hind	1845	A Study in Scarlet
Hulse-Taylor Pulsar	Russell A. Hulse, Joseph H. Taylor	1975	The Terrible Twos
Innes’ Star	Robert T.A. Innes	1920	In the Neighbourhood
Kapteyn’s Star	Jacobus C. Kapteyn	1897	Life in the Fast Lane
Kepler’s Supernova	Johannes Kepler	1604	Going Out with a Bang
Krzemiński’s Star	Wojceich Krzemiński	1974	The Terrible Twos
Kuwano’s Object, Kuwano-Honda Object	Yoshiyuki Kuwano, Minoru Honda	1979, 1978	The Inconstant Stars
Luyten’s Star	Willem J. Luyten	1935	In the Neighbourhood
Merrill’s Star	Paul W. Merrill	1938	Taking It To Extremes
Pearce’s Star	Joseph A. Pearce	1926	The Terrible Twos
Persson’s Star	Roger Persson	2004	Amateur Hour
Plaskett’s Star	John S. Plaskett	1922	The Terrible Twos
Popper’s Extreme Helium Star	Daniel M. Popper	1942	Across the Spectrum
Przybylski’s Star	Antoni Przybylski	1961	Across the Spectrum
Roberts-Altizer Variable	Dorothea Klumpke Roberts, Robert J. Altizer	1914, 1972	The Inconstant Stars
Rosino’s Object, Rosino-Zwicky Object	Leonido Rosino, Fritz Zwicky	1961, 1965	The Inconstant Stars
Sakurai’s Object	Yukio Sakurai	1996	Amateur Hour
Sanduleak’s Star	Nicholas Sanduleak	1977	Taking It To Extremes
Sanduleak-Pesch Binary	Nicholas Sanduleak, Peter Pesch	1991	The Terrible Twos
Scholz’s Star	Ralf-Dieter Scholz	2014	In the Neighbourhood
Sneden’s Star	Christopher Sneden	1994	Across the Spectrum
Stepanian’s Star	Jivan A. Stepanian	1979	The Inconstant Stars
Stephenson-Sanduleak Object*	Charles B. Stephenson, Nicholas Sanduleak	1977	The Terrible Twos
Teegarden’s Star	Bonnard J. Teegarden	2003	In the Neighbourhood
Tycho’s Supernova	Tycho Brahe	1573	Going Out with a Bang
Van Biesbroeck’s Star	Georges-Achille Van Biesbroeck	1944	Taking It To Extremes
van Maanen’s Star	Adriaan van Maanen	1917	In the Neighbourhood

*The Stephenson-Sanduleak Object is better known by its catalogue name, SS433.

Power series of the polytrope equations

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 303, 466–470

We derive recurrence relations for the coefficients a_k in the power series expansion θ(ξ) = ∑ a_k ξ^2k of the solution of the Lane-Emden equation, and examine the convergence of these series. For values of the polytropic index n < n₁ ~ 1.9 the series appear to converge everywhere inside the star. For n > n₁ the series converge in the inner part of the star but then diverge. We also derive the series expansions for θ, ξ in powers of m = q^2/3, where q = −ξ² dθ/dξ is the polytropic mass. These series appear to converge everywhere within the star for all n ≤ 5. Finally we show that θ(ξ) can be satisfactorily approximated (~1%) by (1 − c ξ²)/(1 + e ξ²)^m, and give the values of the constants determined by a Padé approximation to the series, and by a two-parameter fit to the numerical solutions.

Unstructured Sparse Matrix Dense Vector Multiplication on the DAP

Master of Science Degree Project, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, August 1990

The DAP mentioned in the title and the abstract is the Applied Memory Technology Distributed Array Processor which is a massively parallel computer of single instruction multiple data (SIMD) architecture. The DAP 600 series machine which I used in my research had 4096 single-bit processing elements arranged in a 64 × 64 array, and was attached to a host computer, in this case a Digital Equipment Corporation VAX 8350. The host machine handled all input and output as well as data transfer to and from the DAP. The host programs were written in FORTRAN 77 and the DAP programs were written in FORTRAN-PLUS, a dialect of FORTRAN specific to the DAP.

The development and ever-increasing use of parallel computers have forced programmers to re-examine even the most basic mathematical algorithms and computational techniques in order to efficiently adapt these procedures to new computer architectures. Matrix vector multiplication is a familiar algorithm and has been implemented successfully on a variety of parallel computers. However, sparse matrices, which are common in many application areas, can be difficult to deal with in parallel because of their packed storage representations. This paper examines sixteen unstructured sparse matrix dense vector multiplication algorithms, all specifically tailored to the DAP.