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Astronomy, as many other scientific disciplines, is facing a true data deluge which is bound to change both the praxis and the methodology of every day research work. The emerging field of astroinformatics, while on the one end appears…
Star clusters and their stellar populations play a significant role in the context of galaxy evolution, across space (from local to high redshift) and time (from currently forming to fossil remnants). We are now within reach of answering a…
Stellar variability studies are now reaching a completely new level thanks to ESA's Gaia mission, which enables us to locate many variable stars in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and determine the various instability strips/bands.…
This paper introduces a novel variability report generator developed for the Large Array Survey Telescope (LAST), a cost-effective multi-purpose telescope array conducting a wide survey of the variable sky in the visible-light spectrum.…
Fundamental changes are taking place in the way we do astronomy. In twenty years time, it is likely that most astronomers will never go near a cutting-edge telescope, which will be much more efficiently operated in service mode. They will…
Contemporary astronomy is undergoing a revolution, perhaps even more important than that which took place with the advent of radioastronomy in the 1960s, and then the opening of the sky to observations in the other electromagnetic…
Over the past decade the study of solar-like oscillations in red-giant stars has developed significantly. Not only the number of red-giant stars for which solar-like oscillations have been observed has increased, but the quality of these…
During this last decade our knowledge of the evolutionary properties of stars has significantly improved. This result has been achieved thanks to our improved understanding of the physical behavior of stellar matter in the thermal regimes…
Cosmologists will soon be in a unique position. Observational noise will gradually be replaced by cosmic variance as the dominant source of uncertainty in an increasing number of observations. We reflect on the ramifications for the…
Major improvements in models of chemically peculiar stars have been achieved in the past few years. With these new models it has been possible to test quantitatively some of the processes involved in the formation of abundance anomalies and…
The exponential growth of astronomical data from large-scale surveys has created both opportunities and challenges for the astrophysics community. This paper explores the possibilities offered by transfer learning techniques in addressing…
Stars are mostly found in binary and multiple systems, as at least 50% of all solar-like stars have companions - a fraction that goes up to 100% for the most massive stars. Moreover, a large fraction of them will interact in some way or…
The NASA Kepler mission -in flight since March 2009- is producing an enormous number of high-quality continuous light curves. Now, and for the first time ever, we are able to do ensemble asteroseismology, i.e., to do an asteroseismic…
Far-infrared astronomy has advanced rapidly since its inception in the late 1950's, driven by a maturing technology base and an expanding community of researchers. This advancement has shown that observations at far-infrared wavelengths are…
Massive stars play a major role not only in stellar evolution but also galactic evolution theory. This is because of their dynamical interaction with binary companions, and because their strong winds and explosive deaths as supernovae…
The observable characteristics and subsequent evolution of young stellar populations is dominated by their massive stars. As our understanding of those massive stars and the factors affecting their evolution improves, so our interpretation…
In an age of media saturation, how can astronomers succeed in grabbing the public's attention to increase awareness and understanding of astronomy? Here I discuss some creative alternatives to press releases, public lectures, television…
An impressive bulk of multiple astronomical observations indicates that there are plenty of objects in the universe with the age which cannot be explained by the conventional theory. A model is considered which successfully describes all…
Astronomy is in an era where all-sky surveys are mapping the Galaxy. The plethora of photometric, spectroscopic, asteroseismic and astrometric data allows us to characterise the comprising stars in detail. Here we quantify to what extent…
Details of the London pilot of the `Discovery Project' are presented, where university-based astronomers were given the chance to pass on some real and applied knowledge of astronomy to a group of selected secondary school pupils. It was…