M. Stavinschi

• PhD
• Researcher at Astronimical Institute of the Romanian Academy

À travers les contributions réunies dans ce recueil, la muséologie scientifique et technique, en plus des traits caractéristiques de son histoire et de l’incidence européenne, s’attache à des problématiques complexes. Elle revêt des formes variées, conséquences d’influences culturelles, historiques et politiques, dépasse la sphère muséale et permet...

The 2020 pandemics has brought about a revolution in education, thanks to the pervasiveness of online teaching. Contents, methods and techniques can now be rapidly shared across the globe. On the downside, a number of disciplines have been neglected or dropped altogether. Our paper aims to address the following questions: How has Astronomy in cultu...

Nicolae Donitch gave a special role to Romania’s membership of the IAU, even though it had basically adhered to it in 1922, but only on the 12th of July 1928 was Romania’s membership in the IAU recognized. He was a passionate observer of eclipses, of the zodiacal light, and a good instrument builder. His tortuous destiny was somehow similar to the...

Abstract This paper deals mainly with the history of Henri Poincaré's trip to a mining region of Banat. In 1877, Henri Poincaré, in those times student at the “École des Mines” in Paris, went on a compulsory three-month study trip, at the end of the second year of studies. His travel route was passing through Paris, Vienna, Prague, Krakow, Trieste,...

The planar symmetrical (n+1)-body problem in a Schwarzschild-type field is being investigated. One proves that, if n equal masses are initially situated at the vertices of a regular polygon centered in the (n+1)-th mass, and if the initial velocities form a vector field symmetrical with respect to the central mass, then the polygonal configuration...

The nonlinear stability of the equilibrium orbits corresponding to a potential function A/r+B/r2 (r = distance between bodies, A and B = real parameters) is being investigated. The method uses a combination of the block-diagonalization technique with the reduction procedure. The test points out certain nonlinearly stable equilibria, and is irreleva...

We present information on the Bucharest plate catalogues (0.38 m refractor and 0.16 m camera) included in the Wide-Field Plate Database, containing a total of 10 533 plates. The primary aims of the observations were to obtain accurate positions of asteroids (78% of all plates) and to serve for different observational campaigns. However, the scienti...

Information about the wide-field plate archives located in Europe is presented. The total number of wide-field plates stored in 230 archives in Europe (including the former Soviet Union republics) is estimated to about 1140000 or 56% of all known wide-field plates in the world. The analysis of the European wide-field plate archives shows that they...

C46 was a Commission of the Executive Committee of the IAU under Division XII (Union-Wide Activities), then after 2012 under Division C (Education, Outreach, and Heritage). It was the only commission dealing exclusively with astronomy education; a previous Commission 38 (Exchange of Astronomers), which allocated travel grants to astronomers who nee...

Anytime we are considering science's perspectives, thus astronomy, we have to go into the past for better knowing the observer's traditions or of the group in which we are working to see which are the main directions that can be continued or, on the contrary, what is already old and where should we go. Astronomical experience in Romania is not an e...

Ruđer Josip Bošković was a physicist, an astronomer, a mathematician, a philosopher, a diplomat, a poet, a theologian and a Jesuit priest, who lived between 1711 and 1787. He was born in Dubrovnik. He lived most of his life in Italy and France, but he also spent time in other parts of Europe, including the Romanian territories. In 1756 he began a l...

Résumé — « Son érudition scientifique était si vaste et profonde et son pouvoir de compréhension si grand qu'il choisissait les sujets de recherche à sa volonté et il imprimait partout, avec la même puissance, les signes de son génie ». C'est ainsi que Henri Poincaré a été caractérisé par l'un de ses principaux collaborateurs, le savant roumain Spi...

C46 is a Commission of the Executive Committee of the IAU under Division XII Union-Wide Activities. Aiming at improvement of astronomy education and research at all levels worldwide (through the various projects it initiates),maintains, develops, as well as through the dissemination of information. C46 has 332 members and it was managed by the Orga...

Part I. Astrometry in the Twenty-First Century: 1. Opportunities and challenges for astrometry in the twenty-first century M. Perryman; 2. Astrometric satellites L. Lindegren; 3. Ground-based opportunities for astrometry N. Zacharias; Part II. Relativistic Foundations of Astrometry and Celestial Mechanics: 4. Vectors in astrometry, an introduction...

Thanks to modern technology, astronomy can be communicated to the public through a variety of techniques, from classic conferences (also upgraded to the video projectors, etc.) to TV, print media and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, MySpace, etc. We are going to present advantages of electronic publishing, starting from i...

The 1874 transit was an event that attracted world-wide attention, and many nations arranged observing stations within their own territories or organized international expeditions in order to try and contribute to one of the most challenging problems in astronomy at the time: the value of the solar parallax (and hence the 'astronomical unit'). Roma...

Situated at the crossroads of political interests and battles, in a zone ravaged by numerous natural disasters, the Romanian settlements held out against time with much difficulty. This is the region ranging between Catpathes mountains, Danube and Black Sea. Only a few remnants of the sanctuary at Sarmizegetusa Regia, the capital of Dacia prior to...

The recent IAA Planetary Defence Conference held in Romania, focused on a hot topic: from Threat to Action. It is true that we ought to protect the planet but also educate the population in this direction. Increasing rumours about pseudo-scientific issues, such as the impact with asteroids, comets or debris of spatial missions, the effects of the g...

In 2000 a new IAU working group was founded (IAU GA, Manchester): Future Development of Ground-Based Astrometry (FDGBA). It was revised in 2003 during the IAU GA in Sydney. A new one replaced it in 2006 (IAU GA, Prague): Astrometry by Small Ground-Based Telescopes (ASGBT). It was renewed for other three years during the IAU GA in Rio de Janeiro. Th...

Brief meetings were held to confirm the elections of the incoming Division President, Francoise Genova and Vice President, Ray Norris along with the Organizing Committee which will consist of the incoming Presidents of the 7 Commissions (5,6,14,41,46,50 and 55) plus additional nominated members. The incoming Organizing Committee will thus consist o...

Commission 46 had held two sessions of business meetings during the General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro. Both of them were chaired by Magda Stavinschi.

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci - enti�c research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers.

Bucharest Astronomical Observatory celebrated recently its centenary. Its founders were all mathematicians or, better said, astronomers specialized in celestial mechanics. Their first doctoral theses were defended at Sorbonne, in the second half of the 19th century, under the guidance of the greatest specialists of the time. After they returned hom...

Which is more appropriate? “Astronomy in culture,” or “Astronomy and culture,” or “Culture without astronomy?” These are only few variants, each with its own sense. I guess the last question is the most pertinent. Does culture really exist without astronomy? The existence and evolution of the human civilization answer NO! But what “culture” means?...

At the IAU XXVI General Assembly in 2006, the Division I decided to create the Working Group on Astrometry by Small Ground-Based Telescopes (WG-ASGBT). Its scientific goals are to foster the follow-up of small bodies detected by the large surveys including the NEOs; to set-up a dedicated observation network for the follow-up of objects which will b...

Division XII consists of Commissions that formerly were organized under the Executive Committee, that concern astronomers across a wide range of scientific sub-disciplines and provide interactions with scientists in a wider community, including governmental organizations, outside the IAU.

Commission 46 continues its task in the triennium, which started in September 2006. It seeks to further contribute to the development and improvement of astronomical education at all levels all over the world through various projects initiated, maintained and to be developed by the Commission, and by disseminating information concerning astronomy e...

With contributions by Frank Pieter Hesse, Michael Petzet, Anna Sidorenko-Dulom, Rajesh Kochhar, Viktor K. Abalakin, Suzanne Débarbat, Pedro Chalbaud, Peter Müller, Pedro Raposo, Christophe Benoist, Gaye Danisan, Füsun Limboz, Marcus Granato, James Caplan, Anneliese Schnell, Lajos G. Balázs, Magda Vargha, Endre Zsoldos, Magda Stavinschi, Catalin Mos...

Astronomy is not only a branch of science but also an important part of the culture and civilisations of peoples. Starting with archeoastronomy to the present day, it has always contributed to a better understanding of life, of humanity. After 400 years of modern astronomy, it still addresses major problems such as: Why there is something rather th...

The sky and its lore have been always a historical heritage common to all the peoples and thus must be considered as an important cultural element. The European Union Institutions have considered a significant issue locating, studying and keeping for the future the historical places that have had an astronomical cultural relation, considering the i...

Introduction Astrometry of celestial objects is based on the determination and use of the coordinates of these objects with respect to appropriate space and time reference systems. Such coordinates are essential for many applications in astronomy and geodesy. This chapter provides the theoretical basis and definitions, as well as expressions to be...

In this contribution we present and analyze the collaboration of Romanian and Serbian astronomers. We also give the data on mutual visits of Romanian and Serbian astronomers, obtained by investigating the Guest book of Bucharest Astronomical Observatory and Annual Reports of Directors of Belgrade Astronomical Observatory published in various editio...

Selection from past astronomy education, activities, textbooks and curricula will be presented. Didactic aspects and comparison with physics education will be exemplified. The astronomy∕science education along the time in Romania was roughly divided in four directions: very broad information texts for everybody, popular science, school textbooks, s...

100 years of astronomical research in Romania happen almost at 400 years after Galileo Galilei first looked at the sky with one of his instruments. However, there is a background that goes back in time further and makes specialists take into account that there is some kind of ``cosmic feeling'' throughout the Romanian culture. All contributes to a...

We present a brief history of the Romanian astronomy. We focus on the Bucharest Astronomical Observatory, presenting its set up and its development, with all difficulties and successes. The research after 1990, under the aegis of the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy, is emphasized.

Scientific collaboration between Bucharest Observatory of the Astronomical Institute (Romania) and Nikolaev Astronomical Observatory (Ukraine), based on the similar research directions and scientific traditions from the beginning of 1990s. The main research field was positional astronomy with compilation of catalogues of star positions in the field...

Children have always been the best distributors of information. They impart what they learn in school to family, friends and to other children. That is why astronomy communication should begin at their level, for children, at school. IAU Commission 46 is undergoing a period of major transformation, seeking new ways to edu-cate, motivated by the app...

Si hemos de aprovechar la astrometría con precisión de micro segundos de arco que nos ofrecerán las nuevas técnicas de observación, debemos reformular nuestros estudios sobre sistemas de referencia y ecuaciones de movimiento en el contexto de la relatividad especial y general. También debemos desarrollar métodos más avanzados para el análisis estad...

Astrometry and Celestial Mechanics have entered a new era with the advent of Micro-arcsecond positions, parallaxes and proper motions. Cutting-edge science topics will be addressed that were far beyond our grasp only a few years ago. It will be possible to determine definitive distances to Cepheid variables, the center of our Galaxy, the Magellanic...

Many small ground-based telescopes (with diameter less than 2m) allow us to perform programs of observations well adapted to astrometric measurements. The improvement of limiting magnitudes thanks to the use of CCD detector and their availability make them very useful for follow-up programs or observations on alert. This communication gives several...

The world will soon celebrate the International Year of Astronomy; however, after 400 years of modern astronomy, we are faced with a paradox: whilst science and technique keep making huge progress, children in school learn less and less about the universe. Therefore, we intend to explore some possible teaching strategies in countries where at prese...

``The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seek to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of the cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.'' We would like to follow these criteria in educating the young generations: getting familiar with...

The paper intends to present a history of the solar eclipses observed in common by the two countries. This has been possible due to the long cooperation between the two countries, which lasts for at least three centuries. The most important results were obtained during the total solar eclipses of 1893, observed in Senegal, and of 11 August 1999.

We survey the recent Romanian results in the study of the two-body problem in post-Newtonian fields. Such a field is characterized, in general, by a potential of the form U(q)=|q|^{-1}+ something (small, but not compulsorily). We distinguish some classes of post-Newtonian models: relativistic (Schwarzschild, Fock, Einstein PN, Reissner-Nordström, S...

In the University of Bucharest, by tradition, Astronomy was developed within the Department of Mechanics dominated by outstanding mathematicians. From this reason, for a long time, Astronomy was sustained mainly in the Faculty of Mathematics. Some lectures were given in the Faculty of Physics, too. After 1990, the astrophysics became a systematic c...

Working Group on Future Development of Ground-Based Astrometry - Volume 25 Issue 2 - Magda Stavinschi

We discuss education in astrometry.

The XXIVth General Assembly in Manchester approved the foundation of a special working-group: "Future development of the ground-based astrometry". FDGBA is a working group of the Division 1. Its activity in the first three years has allowed that the XXVth General Assembly in Sydney determined its continuation for another three years. Naturally, the...

Astronomy is, by definition, the sum of the material and spiritual values created by mankind and of the institutions necessary to communicate these values. Consequently, astronomy belongs to the culture of each society and its scientific progress does nothing but underline its role in culture. It is interesting that there is even a European society...

The future European space astrometric mission GAIA will map the Galaxy in the 2011-2015 period. Global astrometry of billions of astrophysical objects will be performed during this survey. Among them, many new Solar System objects, in particular fast moving objects, will be discovered. We thus expect to discover several hundred of thousands of smal...

The planar symmetrical (n+1)-body problem in a Manev-type field (featured by a potential of the form α/r + β/r2) is being tackled. One proves that, if n equal masses are initially situated at the vertices of a regular polygon centered in the (n+1)-th mass (Maxwell's model for the rings of Saturn), and if the initial velocities form a vector field s...

The quasihomogeneous fields (featured by sums of homogeneous potentials) model a lot of concrete fields met in problems of nonlinear particle dynamics belonging mainly to physics and astronomy, but not only. The particularly important aspect of singularities of the n-body problem in such fields is being tackled. A Painlevé-type criterion for the ex...

The Earth becomes increasingly known as we explore the Solar System. The more answers we find on exoplanets, for instance, the better we know our planet. We discover many enigmas in the outer space and, surprisingly, solving them may lead to a higher perception of the land we are pacing. We must be aware of science news that means communicating val...

At the last Conference of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture, a new working group was set up. It intends to support the efforts of UNESCO World Heritage Centre to contribute to the implementation of the Thematic Initiative "Astronomy and World Heritage" elaborated at the first international meeting held at the UNESCO Bureau for Science i...

La Astrometría está preparada para entrar en una era de crecimiento y relevancia sin paralelo debido a la esperada abundancia de datos procedentes de las misiones espaciales SIM y GAIA. Se diseñan modernos telescopios terrestres, como el LSST, que brindaran datos menos precisos, pero de una mayor cantidad de estrellas. El potencial para los estudio...

The working group “The Future Development of Ground-Based Astrometry” of the IAU Division 1, founded in 2000, continued its activity for the last triennium. Part of its results—meetings or programs—are presented here. The FDGBA web site is http://www.astro.ro/wg

Henri Poincaré was not only a honorary member of the Romanian Academy, but also an important collaborator of many Romanian mathematicians and astronomers. It is sufficient to mention Spiru Haret, the first doctor in mathematics at Sorbonne, or Nicolae Coculescu, the first director of the Astronomical Observatory of Bucharest. The 150th anniversary...

We present CCD, photoelectric, and video observations of selected mutual phenomena of the Galilean satellites. The campaign was carried out in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca as part of the PHEMU2003 international effort. Five different optical systems were used for data acquisition. Here we report the observational results obtained in acceptable meteoro...

We approach the dynamics in proto-stellar systems via the two-body problem associated to an anisotropic Schwarzschild-type potential. On the basis of the natural symmetries of the characteristic vector field, and using variational methods (particularly the classical lower-semicontinuity method), we prove the existence of infinitely many families of...

The WG ""The Future Development of Ground Based Astrometry"" was set up during the XXIVth IAU GA. During its three years of activity it organized two international meetings (one during JENAM 2001 the other during JOURNEES 2002) it has its own web site (www.astro.ro/wg.html)and had a large exchange of opinions with its members. New proposals for the...


On June 8, 2004, the Venus transit in front of the Sun took place. It was a rare astronomical phenomenon, because the last Venus transit took place in 1882 and was only partially visible in Europe. Such a rare phenomenon mobilized all who are curious about the sky, but it also was a good opportunity for specialists to spread some knowledge about t...

Venus' transit across the solar disk in 1874 was observed in Romania, too. We present the Romanian (Neculai Culianu and Sefan Micle) and Austrian (Theodor von Oppolzer and Edmund Weiss) personalities who observed the transit, as well as the event as seen from Jassy.

Dynamical systems associated to a Newtonian-type potential plus a perturbing potential containing a small real parameter model a large class of concrete astronomical situations, among which satellite orbits have a place of choice. We investigate such models using a combination between block-diagonalization technique and the usual reduction procedur...

Almost five years ago, the Romanian astronomers had to cope with a totally exceptional event: the '99 total solar eclipse, whose maximum was on the territory of our country. It was not only a scientific participation, but also an experiment of education and communication with the general public. It was followed by other occasions, when the experien...

The only fields for which the correctness of the point-mass representation (Newton's theorem) can be proved are those characterized by potentials of the form A/r+Br2. After tackling various details of the two-body problem in such a field (collision, escape, equilibria, symmetries), we complete the study by describing the global flow for all possibl...

We point out some periodicities common to the solar activity and to the Earth's rotation, characterized by the length of the day (LOD). The behavior of the LOD time series was analyzed through the "time-frequency distribution" approach. The QBO oscillation (the 26 months period - 046 cycles/year) and 10.5 years (0.095 cycles/year) cycles of solar v...

The ways by which earthquakes could influence the Earth’s rotation and, in a reciprocal way, the Earth tides could possibly trigger earthquakes have been investigated by many authors for more than one century. After summarizing studies ranging among the most prominent ones on the topic, we present an example of statistical results related to tide-e...

The two-body problem associated to an anisotropic Schwarzschild-type field is being tackled. Both the motion equations and the energy integral are regularized via McGehee-type transformations. The regular vector field exhibits nice symmetries that form a commutative group endowed with an idempotent structure. The physically fictitious flows on the...

Romanian astronomy has a more than 2000-year old tradition, which is, however, little known abroad. The first known archive of astronomical information is the Dacian sanctuary at Sarmizegetusa Regia, erected in the first century AD, having similarities with that of Stonehenge. After a gap of more than 1000 years, more sources of astronomical inform...

Perhaps more than other post-Communist countries Romania underwent a dramatic change after 1989. One of the most sharp problems remains the change of mentality and implicitly education of youngsters. Astronomy has a particularly important role in this context especially now. Unfortunately it does not belong to curricula anymore. Its reintroduction...

The dynamics of bodies under the combined action of gravitation and radiation has large and deep implications in astronomy. In the 1920s, based on physical arguments, the Romanian astronomer Constantin Popovici proposed a modified radiative force, while the Bulgarian physicist Georgi Manev proposed a classical post-Newtonian force. This paper deals...

Contents: 1. Kinematical and dynamical celestial reference systems. 2. Celestial and terrestrial reference systems. 3. Theory of Earth rotation. 4. Space and ground-based astrometry. 5. Time, time transfer and Earth rotation.

The WG ""The Future Development of Ground Based Astrometry"" was set up during the XXIVth IAU GA. During its three years of activity it organized two international meetings (one during JENAM 2001 the other during JOURNEES 2002) it has its own web site (www.astro.ro/wg.html)and had a large exchange of opinions with its members. New proposals for the...

After the success of Hipparcos, and in the perspective of the future astrometric space missions such as DIVA and GAIA, we discuss the role of small telescopes and the development ofground-based astrometry. Several photometric and astrometric programs, that could be performed with small instruments existing in the observatories of different countrie...