Related papers: Space Astronomy for the mid-21st Century: Robotica…
The performance of optical clocks has strongly progressed in recent years, and accuracies and instabilities of 1 part in 10^18 are expected in the near future. The operation of optical clocks in space provides new scientific and…
The world is changing fast, and so is the space sector. Planning for large scientific experiments two decades ahead may no longer be the most sensible approach. I develop the argument that large science experiments are becoming comparable…
Observational astronomy has changed drastically in the last decade: manually driven target-by-target instruments have been replaced by fully automated robotic telescopes. Data acquisition methods have advanced to the point that terabytes of…
The observation of celestial objects is a fundamental activity in astronomy. Ground-based and space telescopes are used to gather electromagnetic radiation from space, allowing astronomers to study a wide range of celestial objects and…
In this State of the Profession Consideration, we will discuss the state of hands-on observing within the profession, including: information about professional observing trends; student telescope training, beginning at the undergraduate and…
The observation of celestial objects is a fundamental activity in astronomy. Ground-based and space telescopes are used to gather electromagnetic radiation from space, allowing astronomers to study a wide range of celestial objects and…
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 field of time-domain astronomy has experienced unprecedented growth due to the increasing deployment of robotic telescopes capable of autonomous, round-the-clock sky monitoring. These instruments have revolutionized the detection and…
In the last decade a new generation of telescopes and sensors has allowed the production of a very large amount of data and astronomy has become, a data-rich science; this transition is often labeled as: "data revolution" and "data…
SONG aims at setting up a network of small 1m telescopes around the globe to observe stars uninterrupted throughout days, weeks and even months. This paper describes the fundamental aspects for putting up such a network and how we will…
Laboratory astrophysics and complementary theoretical calculations are the foundations of astronomy and astrophysics and will remain so into the foreseeable future. The impact of laboratory astrophysics ranges from the scientific conception…
Astronomy has played a major part in the development of civilisations, not only through conceptual developments, but most importantly through the very practical gains obtained through the observation of Sun, Moon planets and stars. Space…
Much of the progress in Astronomy has been driven by instrumental developments, from the first telescopes to fiber fed spectrographs. In this review we describe the field of astrophotonics, a combination of photonics and astronomical…
There is a widely held view in the astronomical community that unmanned robotic space vehicles are, and will always be, more efficient explorers of planetary surfaces than astronauts (e.g. Coates, 2001; Clements 2009; Rees 2011). Partly…
Robotic space missions have long depended on automation, defined in the 2015 NASA Technology Roadmaps as "the automatically-controlled operation of an apparatus, process, or system using a pre-planned set of instructions (e.g., a command…
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,…
Ground-based synoptic solar observations provide critical contextual data used to model the large-scale state of the heliosphere. The next decade will see a combination of ground-based telescopes and space missions that will study our Sun's…
Forecasting optical turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere has been an ambitious challenge for the astronomical scientific community for several decades. While earlier research primarily focused on whether it was possible to predict optical…
The previous generation of astronomical instruments tended to consist of single receivers in the focal point of one or more physical reflectors. Because of this, most astronomical data sets were small enough that the raw data could easily…
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…