V.A. Ambartsumian Selected Papers: Stars, Nebulae and Galaxies (Advances in Astronomy and Astrophysics)

The volume contains selected papers by the celebrated astronomer Victor A. Ambartsumian, many of which are being published for the first time in English translation. The first section contains papers relating to nebulae, including his simple formulation of Zanstra's methods for determining the temperature of the central stair illuminating a planetary nebula, which led to the first treatment of the radiative equilibrium of a planetary nebula. Section II contains Ambartsumian's papers on Stellar dynamics, where he stresses the importance of the statistics of binary stars for the time scale of the universe, whilst Section III contains his work on radiative transfer, including two papers in which he formulates his principles of invariance in the theory of radiative transfer. Section IV relates to interstellar absorption, and includes articles on the fluctuations of brightness of our Galaxy, formulated in terms of the principle of invariance, and the astronomical consequences of this principle in stellar statistics.