Related papers: Future instrumentation for the study of the Warm-H…
The quality of astronomical spectra is now so high that the accuracy of the laboratory data is getting more and more important for the analysis and interpretation. Both in astrophysics and cosmology the needs for accurate laboratory…
During the next decade a tremendous advance will take place in instrumentation for spectroscopy of the interstellar medium. Major new facilities (ALMA, SOFIA, APEX, LMT, Herschel and others) will be constructed and commissioned, so that the…
Due to its location and climate, Antarctica offers unique conditions for long-period observations across a broad wavelength regime, where important diagnostic lines for molecules and ions can be found, that are essential to understand the…
We describe the potential of high resolution imaging spectroscopy with the SXS on ASTRO-H to advance our understanding of the interstellar- and circumgalactic media of our own Galaxy, and other galaxies. Topics to be addressed range from…
The Local Interstellar Medium (LISM) is a unique environment that presents an opportunity to study general interstellar phenomena in great detail and in three dimensions. In particular, high resolution optical and ultraviolet spectroscopy…
A comprehensive study of interstellar medium phases and the nature of their boundaries or connections requires comparing abundances and velocity profiles from tracers of the different phases. In the UV, studies of a wealth of absorption…
We present an efficient heating/cooling method coupled with chemistry and ultraviolet (UV) radiative transfer, which can be applied to numerical simulations of the interstellar medium (ISM). We follow the time-dependent evolution of…
X-ray observations of galaxies have grown from a curiosity into a full-fledged field of astronomy. These observations provide unique information on black holes, binary stars, and the hot phase of the ISM, which can be used to constrain the…
Small satellite platforms with high performance avionics are becoming more affordable. So far, with a few exceptions, small satellites have been mainly dedicated to earth observation. However, astronomy is a fascinating field with a history…
Recent observations suggest that hydrogen reionization ends late ($z \simeq 6$) and proceeds quickly. We present here a new model of the meta-galactic UV/X-ray background (UVB) that is consistent with this. It adopts the most recent…
Astrophotonics is a burgeoning field that lies at the interface of photonics and modern astronomical instrumentation. Here we provide a pedagogical review of basic photonic functions that enable modern instruments, and give an overview of…
Opening up the dynamic infrared sky for systematic time-domain exploration would yield many scientific advances. Multi-messenger pursuits such as localizing gravitational waves from neutron star mergers and quantifying the nucleosynthetic…
The warm-hot plasma in cosmic web filaments is thought to comprise a large fraction of the gas in the local Universe. So far, the search for this gas has focused on mapping its emission, or detecting its absorption signatures against…
This chapter describes the astrophysics encoded by the 21-cm background. We begin with a brief introduction to the radiative transfer and ionization chemistry relevant to the high-z intergalactic medium. Then, we will provide a review of…
The constantly improving sensitivity of ground-based and space-borne observatories has made possible the detection of high-energy emission (X-rays and gamma-rays) from several thousands of extragalactic sources. Enormous progress has been…
What is long-baseline optical/IR stellar interferometry? A few years ago, many astronomers might not have been able to answer that question properly. This is today hopefully not the case anymore, because mainstream facilities, such as the…
Over the next decade, we can expect time domain astronomy to flourish at optical and radio wavelengths. In parallel with these efforts, a dedicated transient "machine" operating at higher energies (X-ray band through soft gamma-rays) is…
Gamma-ray line observations provide a versatile tool for studies of nucleosynthesis processes and supernova physics. In particular, the observation of radioactive species in the interstellar medium probes recent nucleosynthesis activity on…
Remarkable progress has been made in understanding turbulent astrophysical plasmas in past decades including, notably, the solar wind and the interstellar medium. In the case of the solar wind, much of this progress has relied on in situ…
For the last few decades the study of disks around stars young and old and of different types have progressed significantly. During the same time a completely new discipline, the study of exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than our…