Related papers: Analysing surveys of our Galaxy I: basic astrometr…
A general overview of the understanding of our Galaxy is presented following the lines of its main structures: halo, disc, bulge/bar. This review is emphasising some "Time Domain Astronomy" contributions. On the one hand the distance and…
A trade-off between speed and information controls our understanding of astronomical objects. Fast-to-acquire photometric observations provide global properties, while costly and time-consuming spectroscopic measurements enable a better…
With systems for acquiring 3D surface data being evermore commonplace, it has become important to reliably extract specific shapes from the acquired data. In the presence of noise and occlusions, this can be done through the use of…
This paper describes a method for quantitatively comparing an N-body model with a sample of discrete kinematic data. The comparison has two stages: (i) finding the optimum scaling and orientation of the model relative to the data; and (ii)…
In this review I will discuss the comparison between model results and observational data for the Milky Way, the predictive power of such models as well as their limits. Such a comparison, known as Galactic archaeology, allows us to impose…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is designed to provide an unprecedented optical imaging dataset that will support investigations of our Solar System, Galaxy and Universe, across half the sky and over ten years of repeated observation.…
Our Milky Way Galaxy is a typical large spiral galaxy, representative of the most common morphological type in the local Universe. We can determine the properties of individual stars in unusual detail, and use the characteristics of the…
We perform a comparison of different approaches to star-galaxy classification using the broad-band photometric data from Year 1 of the Dark Energy Survey. This is done by performing a wide range of tests with and without external `truth'…
Scientific research is a major driving force in a knowledge based economy. Income, health and wellbeing depend on scientific progress. The better we understand the inner workings of the scientific enterprise, the better we can prompt,…
The next decade affords tremendous opportunity to achieve the goals of Galactic archaeology. That is, to reconstruct the evolutionary narrative of the Milky Way, based on the empirical data that describes its current morphological,…
The first step in a science project is the acquisition and understanding of the relevant data. This paper outlines the results of a project to design and test network tools specifically oriented at retrieving astronomical data. The tools…
We investigate the possibility of describing the spiral pattern of the Milky Way in terms of a model of superposition 2- and 4-armed wave harmonics (the simplest description, besides pure modes). Two complementary methods are used: a study…
A suite of vast stellar surveys mapping the Milky Way, culminating in the Gaia mission, is revolutionizing the empirical information about the distribution and properties of stars in the Galactic stellar disk. We review and lay out what…
We present a new theoretical population synthesis model (the Galaxy Model) to examine and deal with large amounts of data from surveys of the Milky Way and to decipher the present and past structure and history of our own Galaxy. We assume…
Ranking (or top-k) and skyline queries are the most popular approaches used to extract interesting data from large datasets. The first one is based on a scoring function to evaluate and rank tuples. Its computation is fast, but it is…
Current and future large astronomical surveys will yield multiparameter databases on millions or even billions of objects. The scientific exploitation of these will require powerful, robust, and automated classification tools tailored to…
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…
Perhaps more than other physical sciences, astronomy is frequently statistical in nature. The objects under study are inaccessible to direct manipulation in the laboratory, so the astronomer is restricted to observing a few external…
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,…
Astronomy has a distinguished tradition of using technology to accelerate the quality and effectiveness of science, and data-intensive initiatives such as the Virtual Observatory lead the way amongst other fields of science. However,…