In the late 20th and beginning 21st century high-precision astronomy, positioning and metrology strongly rely on general relativity. Supported by exercises and solutions this book offers graduate students and researchers entering those fields a self-contained and exhaustive but accessible treatment of applied general relativity. The book is written in a homogenous (graduate level textbook) style allowing the reader to understand the arguments step by step. It first introduces the mathematical and theoretical foundations of gravity theory and then concentrates on its general relativistic applications: clock rates, clock sychronization, establishment of time scales, astronomical references frames, relativistic astrometry, celestial mechanics and metrology. The authors present up-to-date relativistic models for applied techniques such as Satellite LASER Ranging (SLR), Lunar LASER Ranging (LLR), Globale Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), Very LargeBaseline Interferometry (VLBI), radar measurements, gyroscopes and pulsar timing. A list of acronyms helps the reader keep an overview and a mathematical appendix provides required functions and terms.

Autorentext

Prof. Dr. phil. nat. Michael Soffel is the director of the Lohrmann Observatory of the Technical University Dresden. He is an internationally known expert in relativistic celestial mechanics, relativistic astronomy and geodesy and experimental gravity research. He is the author of the books Relativity in Astrometry, Celestial Mechanics and Geodesy (Springer, 1989) and Space-Time Reference Systems. Prof. Wen-Biao Han, who receicved his Ph.D. in 2009, is full professor at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research area focuses on relativistic fundamental astronomy, numerical simulations of gravity waves and low-frequency gravitational astronomy. He is author of many scientific papers and principle investigator of the group 'Gravitational waves and relativistic fundamental astronomy' at Shanghai Astronomical observatory.

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