Related papers: The Impact of the Astro2010 Recommendations on Var…
The history of stellar seismology suggests that observation and theory often take turns advancing our understanding. The recent tripling of the sample of pulsating white dwarfs generated by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey represents a giant…
A detailed understanding of the physics of star and planet formation requires study of individual objects as well as statistical assessment of global properties and evolutionary trends. Observational investigations of circumstellar material…
Like every other field of intellectual endeavor, astronomy is being revolutionised by the advances in information technology. There is an ongoing exponential growth in the volume, quality, and complexity of astronomical data sets, mainly…
Astronomical objects that change rapidly give us insight into extreme environments, allowing us to identify new phenomena, test fundamental physics, and probe the Universe on all scales. Transient and variable radio sources range from the…
High precision astrometry provides the foundation to resolve many fundamental problems in astrophysics. The application of astrometric studies spans a wide range of fields, and has undergone enormous growth in recent years. This is as a…
I provide an incomplete inventory of the astronomical variability that will be found by next-generation time-domain astronomical surveys. These phenomena span the distance range from near-Earth satellites to the farthest Gamma Ray Bursts.…
Science opportunities and recommendations concerning optical/infrared polarimetry for the upcoming decade in the fields of stars and stellar evolution. Community-based White Paper to Astro2010 in response to the call for such papers.
We discuss how recent advances in observations, theory and numerical simulations have allowed the stellar community to progress in its understanding of stellar convection, rotation and magnetism and to assess the degree to which the Sun and…
With the new discoveries enabled thanks to the recent space missions, stellar physics is going through a revolution. However, these discoveries opened the door to many new questions that require more observations. The European Space…
Long-baseline interferometry at optical and near-infrared wavelengths is an emerging technology which is quickly becoming a useful tool to investigate stellar atmospheres and to compare observations with models. Stellar atmosphere models…
One of the new frontiers of astronomical research is the exploration of time variability on the sky at different wavelengths and flux levels. We have carried out a pilot project using DPOSS data to study strong variables and transients, and…
Strong gravitational lensing enables a wide range of science: probing cosmography; testing dark matter models; understanding galaxy evolution; and magnifying the faint, small and distant Universe. However to date exploiting strong lensing…
Stars, and collections of stars, encode rich signatures of stellar physics and galaxy evolution. With properties influenced by both their environment and intrinsic nature, stars retain information about astrophysical phenomena that are not…
The determination of chemical abundances from stellar spectra is considered a mature field of astrophysics. Digital spectra of stars are recorded and processed with standard techniques, much like samples in the biological sciences.…
Weak gravitational lensing surveys measure the distortion of the image of distant sources due to the deflections of light rays by the fluctuations of the gravitational potential along the line of sight. Since they probe the non-linear…
The study of stellar oscillations - asteroseismology - has revolutionized our understanding of the physical properties of the Sun, and similar potential for other stars has been demonstrated in recent years. In particular, asteroseismic…
As we enter the final year of the second extended mission of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), it is time to reflect on what the TESS mission has contributed to the advancement of astronomy. Thousands of papers based on TESS…
We discuss the opportunities for astronomical discovery via ground-based astrometry carried out in the United States during the 2010-2020 decade. We describe imminent scientific breakthroughs that can be achieved at both classic astrometric…
Despite the large budgets spent annually on astronomical research equipment such as telescopes, instruments and supercomputers, the general trend is to analyse and view the resulting datasets using small, two-dimensional displays. We report…
We describe a rigorous construction, using matched asymptotic expansions, which establishes under very general conditions that local terrestrial and solar-system experiments will measure the effects of varying `constants' of Nature…