Related papers: The Impact of the Astro2010 Recommendations on Var…
Time-resolved ground-based surveys in general, and photometric ones in particular, have played a crucial role in building up our knowledge of the properties, physical nature, and the very existence of the many different classes of variable…
Scientific research is a continuous process, and the speed of future progress can be estimated by the pace of finding explanations for previous research questions. In this observers based view of stellar pulsation and asteroseismology, we…
This is a personal review of various issues related to massive photometric and astrometric searches. A complete inventory of variable stars down to almost any magnitude limit will improve our understanding of the stellar evolution and the…
Looking ahead to the next decade and imagining the landscape of astronomy in 2020, it is clear that astronomical surveys, large and small, plus extensive follow-up projects, will be a great engine of progress in our profession. Surveys have…
Stellar astronomy, fueled by massive capital investments, advances in numerical modeling and theory, is resurgent and arguably is on the verge of a magnificent renaissance. Powerful time domain optical surveys, both on ground and in space,…
Wide-angle surveys have been an engine for new discoveries throughout the modern history of astronomy, and have been among the most highly cited and scientifically productive observing facilities in recent years. This trend is likely to…
With the discovery of the first transiting extrasolar planetary system back to 1999, a great number of projects started to hunt for other similar systems. Because of the incidence rate of such systems was unknown and the length of the…
Although the Sun is our closest star by many orders of magnitude and despite having sunspot records stretching back to ancient China, our knowledge of the Sun's magnetic field is far from complete. Indeed, even now, after decades of study,…
Sky surveys represent a fundamental data basis for astronomy. We use them to map in a systematic way the universe and its constituents, and to discover new types of objects or phenomena. We review the subject, with an emphasis on the…
The answers to fundamental science questions in astrophysics, ranging from the history of the expansion of the universe to the sizes of nearby stars, hinge on our ability to make precise measurements of diverse astronomical objects. As our…
Next-generation radio surveys are about to transform radio astronomy by discovering and studying tens of millions of previously unknown radio sources. These surveys will provide new insights to understand the evolution of galaxies,…
The unprecedented precision of broadband stellar photometry achieved with the planet-hunting missions CoRoT and \textit{Kepler} initiated a new era in examining the magnetically-driven brightness variations of hundreds of thousands of…
Much of the science case for the next generation of deep, wide-field optical/infrared surveys has been driven by the further study of dark energy. This is a laudable goal (and the subject of a companion white paper by Zhan et al.). However,…
Optical interferometry provides us with a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of stellar structure and evolution. Through direct observation of rotationally distorted photospheres at sub-milliarcsecond scales, we are now able to…
Cosmological data in the next decade will be characterized by high-precision, multi-wavelength measurements of thousands of square degrees of the same patches of sky. By performing multi-survey analyses that harness the correlated nature of…
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…
Gaia mission will offer an exceptional opportunity to perform variability studies. The data homogeneity, its optimised photometric systems, composed of 11 medium and 4-5 broad bands, the high photometric precision in G band of one milli-mag…
Over the past century, major advances in astronomy and astrophysics have been largely driven by improvements in instrumentation and data collection. With the amassing of high quality data from new telescopes, and especially with the advent…
The time-variable electromagnetic sky has been well-explored at a wide range of wavelengths. Numerous high-energy space missions take advantage of the dark Gamma-ray and X-ray sky and utilize very wide field detectors to provide almost…
Large-scale photometric surveys are revolutionizing astronomy by delivering unprecedented amounts of data. The rich data sets from missions such as the NASA Kepler and TESS satellites, and the upcoming ESA PLATO mission, are a treasure…