Related papers: The Impact of the Astro2010 Recommendations on Var…
Astronomy has been at the forefront of the development of the techniques and methodologies of data intensive science for over a decade with large sky surveys and distributed efforts such as the Virtual Observatory. However, it faces a new…
Abridged: The golden age of astrophysics is upon us with both grand discoveries (extra-solar planets, dark matter, dark energy) and precision cosmology. Fundamental understanding of the working of stars and galaxies is within reach, thanks…
In spite of the almost all-encompassing variability of Be stars, surveys play a steadily increasing role in complementing the insights gained from single-star studies. The definition of classical Be stars as recently augmented by…
The last 20 years have seen an explosion in our understanding of the large-scale distribution and motions of galaxies in the nearby universe. The field has moved from a largely qualitative, morphological description of the structures seen…
The study of stellar populations is a discipline that is highly dependent on both imaging and spectroscopy. I discuss techniques in different regimes of resolving power: broadband imaging (R~4), intermediate band imaging (R~16, 64),…
ESA and NASA are studying projects having a tremendous return on variable star research. Other national space agencies are also studying or developing projects of smaller costs but with impressive returns. The projects range from global…
Variability in the sky has been known for centuries, even millennia, but our knowledge of it is very incomplete even at the bright end. Current technology makes it possible to built small, robotic optical instruments, to record images and…
Synoptic sky surveys are becoming the largest data generators in astronomy, and they are opening a new research frontier, that touches essentially every field of astronomy. Opening of the time domain to a systematic exploration will…
Astrophysics and cosmology are rich with data. The advent of wide-area digital cameras on large aperture telescopes has led to ever more ambitious surveys of the sky. Data volumes of entire surveys a decade ago can now be acquired in a…
The National Academy Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS) made a recommendation to study a large/medium-class dedicated space telescope for planetary science, going beyond the Discovery-class dedicated planetary space…
Context. Recently our ability to study stars using asteroseismic techniques has increased dramatically, largely through the use of space based photometric observations. Work has also been done using ground based spectroscopic observations…
The time domain has been identified as one of the most important areas of astronomical research for the next decade. The Virtual Observatory is in the vanguard with dedicated tools and services that enable and facilitate the discovery,…
The field of astronomy is experiencing a data explosion driven by significant advances in observational instrumentation, and classical methods often fall short of addressing the complexity of modern astronomical datasets. Probabilistic…
Solar astrometry deals with the accurate measumerent of the solar diameter, and in general with the measurement of the shape of the Sun. During the last decades several techniques have been developed to monitor the radius and the irradiance…
We explore the motivation behind large stellar surveys in Galactic astronomy, in particular, surveys that measure the photometric, phase space and abundance properties of thousands or millions of stars. These observations are essential to…
Nestled in the mountains of Northern India, is a 4-metre rotating dish of liquid mercury. Over a 10-year period, the International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) will survey 117 square degrees of sky, to study the astrometric and…
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…
Asteroseismology has grown from its beginnings three decades ago to a mature field teeming with discoveries and applications. This phenomenal growth has been enabled by space photometry with precision $10-100$ times better than ground-based…
Long range observations in the field of astronomy have opened up our understanding of the Solar System, the Galaxy and the wider Universe. In this paper we discuss the idea of direct in-situ reconnaissance of nearby stellar systems, using…
In this review, we outline the expected tests of gravity that will be achieved at cosmological scales in the upcoming decades. We focus mainly on constraints on phenomenologically parameterized deviations from general relativity, which…