Related papers: Thread Safe Astronomy
Operation of the US Virtual Astronomical Observatory shares some issues with modern physical observatories, e.g., intimidating data volumes and rapid technological change, and must also address unique concerns like the lack of direct…
Telescope and detector developments continuously enable deeper and more detailed studies of astronomical objects. Larger collecting areas, improvement in dispersion and detector techniques, and higher sensitivities allow detection of more…
The study of open clusters has a classic feel to it since the subject predates anyone alive today. Despite the age of this topic, I show via an ADS search that its relevance and importance in astronomy has grown faster in the last few…
Space-based time-domain telescopes such as CoRoT, Kepler/K2 and TESS have profoundly impacted astrophysics over the past two decades. Continuous light curves with high cadence and high photometric precision are now available for millions of…
The main argument that Universe is currently expanding is observed redshift increase by distance. However, this conclusion may not be correct, because cosmological redshift depends only on the scaling factors, the change in the size of the…
The procedure that is currently employed to allocate time on telescopes is horribly onerous on those unfortunate astronomers who serve on the committees that administer the process, and is in danger of complete collapse as the number of…
Modern astronomy increasingly relies upon systematic surveys, whose dedicated telescopes continuously observe the sky across varied wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum; some surveys also observe non-electromagnetic…
The limitations of current technology do not allow one to foresee the expansion of the humankind beyond our planet for at least a few decades. Furthermore, the laws of physics, as for as they are known, preclude any form of traveling beyond…
Astronomy is experiencing a rapid growth in data size and complexity. This change fosters the development of data-driven science as a useful companion to the common model-driven data analysis paradigm, where astronomers develop automatic…
The universe is permeated by a network of filaments, sheets, and knots collectively forming a "cosmic web.'' The discovery of the cosmic web, especially through its signature of absorption of light from distant sources by neutral hydrogen…
Astronomy is entering a new era as multiple, large area, digital sky surveys are in production. The resulting datasets are truly remarkable in their own right; however, a revolutionary step arises in the aggregation of complimentary…
Cultural Astronomy is interdisciplinary connecting the arts, humanities, social & physical sciences. Data collection methods and theories are used from many disciplines and meld with methods and theories within cultural astronomy. The…
In the distant past, astronomy was often intertwined with religion into a unified cosmos. As science became a distinct cultural enterprise, astronomy has witnessed a variety of rich interactions with other fields. Mathematical statistics…
October 1957, and the successful launch of Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit, marked the dawn of the Space Age. The first of the 'fellow travellers' - humanity's first artificial satellite - orbited for a mere three months before re-entering the…
Experience suggests that structural issues in how institutional Astrophysics approaches data-driven science and the development of discovery technology may be hampering the community's ability to respond effectively to a rapidly changing…
Astronomy is changing. Large projects, large collaborations, and large budgets are becoming the norm. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is one example of this new astronomy, and in operating the original survey, we put in place and…
Most major discoveries in astronomy are unplanned, and result from surveying the Universe in a new way, rather than by testing a hypothesis or conducting an investigation with planned outcomes. For example, of the 10 greatest discoveries…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
The Virtual Observatory has reached sufficient maturity for its routine scientific exploitation by astronomers. To prove this statement, here I present a brief description of the complete VO-powered PhD thesis entitled "Galactic and…
Over the past decade, astronomers have been using an increasingly larger number of web-based applications and archives to conduct their research. However, despite the early success in creating links across projects and data centers, the…