Related papers: Optical Synoptic Telescopes: New Science Frontiers
For centuries, the rich nocturnal environment of the starry sky could be modelled only by analogue tools such as paper planispheres, atlases, globes and numerical tables. The immersive sky simulator of the twentieth century, the…
Astronomy and related fields are at the forefront of science and technology; answering fundamental questions and driving innovation. Although blue-skies research like astronomy rarely contributes directly with tangible outcomes on a short…
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,…
A cosmic shear survey, spanning a significant proportion of the sky, should greatly improve constraints on a number of cosmological parameters. It also provides a unique opportunity to examine the matter power spectrum directly. However,…
Neutrino astrophysics offers new perspectives on the Universe investigation: high energy neutrinos, produced by the most energetic phenomena in our Galaxy and in the Universe, carry complementary (if not exclusive) information about the…
Recent years have seen tremendous progress in our understanding of the cosmos, which in turn points to even deeper questions to be further addressed. Concurrently the laser technology has undergone dramatic revolutions, providing exciting…
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…
Radio telescopes observe extremely faint emission from astronomical objects, ranging from compact sources to large scale structures that can be seen across the whole sky. Satellites actively transmit at radio frequencies (particularly at…
Astrophotonics lies at the interface of astronomy and photonics. This burgeoning field -- now formally recognized by the optics community -- has emerged over the past decade in response to the increasing demands of astronomical…
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…
Interferometry has brought many new constraints in optical astronomy in the recent years. A major leap in this field is the opening of large interferometric facilities like the Very Large Telescope Interferometer and the Keck Interferometer…
A new generation of powerful dark energy experiments will open new vistas for cosmology in the next decade. However, these projects cannot reach their utmost potential without data from other telescopes. This white paper focuses in…
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…
The Hubble Space Telescope has produced astonishing science over the past thirty years. Hubble's productivity can continue to soar for years to come provided some worn out components get upgraded. While powerful new ground-based and space…
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is collecting photometry and intermediate resolution spectra for ~ 10**5 stars in the thick-disk and stellar halo of the Milky Way. This massive dataset can be used to infer the properties of the stars…
The SKA will be transformational for many areas of science, but in particular for the study of neutron stars and their usage as tools for fundamental physics in the form of radio pulsars. Since the last science case for the SKA, numerous…
Cosmology contributes a good deal to the investigation of variation of fundamental physical constants. High resolution data is available and allows for detailed analysis over cosmological distances and a multitude of methods were developed.…
The recent advent of laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS AO) on the largest ground-based telescopes has enabled a wide range of high angular resolution science, previously infeasible from ground-based and/or space-based observatories. As…
Time-domain astronomy (TDA) is facing a paradigm shift caused by the exponential growth of the sample size, data complexity and data generation rates of new astronomical sky surveys. For example, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST),…
Weak gravitational lensing is a powerful probe of cosmology and has emerged as a key probe for the Dark Universe. Up till now this science has been conducted mainly at optical wavelengths. Current upgraded and future radio facilities will…