Related papers: The LOFT perspective on neutron star thermonuclear…
Fast X-ray timing can be used to probe strong gravity fields around collapsed objects and constrain the equation of state of dense matter in neutron stars. These studies require extremely good photon statistics. In view of the huge…
Relativistic jets are observed from accreting and cataclysmic transients throughout the Universe, and have a profound affect on their surroundings. Despite their importance, their launch mechanism is not known. For accreting neutron stars,…
The proposed US Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) Program would secure national open access to at least 25% of the observing time on the Thirty Meter Telescope in the north and the Giant Magellan Telescope in the south. ELTs would advance…
The Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer has demonstrated that fast X-ray timing can be used to probe strong gravity fields around collapsed objects and constrain the equation of state of dense matter in neutron stars. These studies require…
The great success of the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) has shown that X-ray timing is an excellent tool for the study of strong gravitational fields and the measurement of fundamental physical properties of black holes and neutron…
The X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission XMM-Newton is ESA's largest observatory so far; it is dedicated to explore the Universe in the 0.2 - 15 keV X-ray band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Because of its large collecting area very faint sources…
NASA's proposed WFIRST-AFTA mission will discover thousands of exoplanets with separations from the habitable zone out to unbound planets, using the technique of gravitational microlensing. The Study Analysis Group 11 of the NASA Exoplanet…
Accretion onto old, isolated neutron stars is reviewed. The detection of their X--ray emission with ROSAT is discussed and a summary of the current status of observations is presented.
With its ability to look at bright galactic X-ray sources with sub-millisecond time resolution, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) discovered that the X-ray emission from accreting compact stars shows quasi-periodic oscillations on the…
We review the state of the art for measuring the X-ray polarization of neutron stars. We discuss how valuable precision measurements of the degree and position angle of polarization as a function of energy and, where relevant, of pulse…
The study of extrasolar planets has rapidly expanded to encompass the search for new planets, measurements of sizes and masses, models of planetary interiors, planetary demographics and occurrence frequencies, the characterization of…
Galactic Exoplanet Survey Telescope (GEST) was proposed for a discovery mission to search for microlensing terrestrial planets toward the Galactic bulge and also Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) that are believed to hold vital information of the…
In this contribution we report the on-going progresses of the project FATE, an operational automatic forecast system conceived to deliver forecasts of a set of astroclimatic and atmospheric parameters having the aim to support the science…
We review the nuclear astrophysics aspects of accreting neutron stars in X-ray binaries. We summarize open astrophysical questions in light of recent observations and their relation to the underlying nuclear physics. Recent progress in the…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will open a discovery frontier for faint and fast transients with its ability to detect variable flux components down to $\sim$24.5 mag in a $\sim$30 second exposure. Spectroscopic follow-up of…
The NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission is a proposal submitted to ESA for its 2010 call for M-size mission within the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan. The main scientific goal of the NEAT mission is to detect and characterize…
An ELT system with its large aperture and sensitive optical and near infrared imager spectrographs will make major contributions to the study of stars ripped apart by supermassive black holes.
The Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) has demonstrated that the dynamical variation of the X-ray emission from accreting neutron stars and stellar mass black holes is a powerful probe of their strong gravitational fields. At the same time,…
Observations with NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have resulted in the discovery of fast (200 - 600 Hz), coherent X-ray intensity oscillations (hereafter, "burst oscillations") during thermonuclear X-ray bursts from 12 low mass…
Many distinct classes of high-energy variability have been observed in astrophysical sources, on a range of timescales. The widest range (spanning microseconds-decades) is found in accreting, stellar-mass compact objects, including neutron…