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We are pleased to present a Special Section on Statistics and Astronomy in this issue of the The Annals of Applied Statistics. Astronomy is an observational rather than experimental science; as a result, astronomical data sets both small…
In the distant past, astronomy was often intertwined with religion into a unified cosmos. As science became a distinct cultural enterprise, astronomy has witnessed a variety of rich interactions with other fields. Mathematical statistics…
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…
With the new discoveries enabled thanks to the recent space missions, stellar physics is going through a revolution. However, these discoveries opened the door to many new questions that require more observations. The European Space…
Optical interferometry provides us with a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of stellar structure and evolution. Through direct observation of rotationally distorted photospheres at sub-milliarcsecond scales, we are now able to…
An amateur astronomer in the modern world has the opportunity not only to make visual observations for own interest, but can make scientific astronomical observations and new discoveries in astronomy. In my example, as amateur astronomer…
Binary stars are as common as single stars. Binary stars are of immense importance to astrophysicists because that they allow us to determine the masses of the stars independent of their distances. They are the cornerstone of the…
The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) is one of the most productive and influential photometric sky surveys in the history of observational astronomy. Originally designed to detect dark matter through gravitational…
Astronomy is entering a new era of discovery, coincident with the establishment of new facilities for observation and simulation that will routinely generate petabytes of data. While an increasing reliance on automated data analysis is…
Variability in the sky has been known for centuries, even millennia, but our knowledge of it is very incomplete even at the bright end. Current technology makes it possible to built small, robotic optical instruments, to record images and…
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…
Oscillations of the Sun and solar-like stars are believed to be excited stochastically by convection near the stellar surface. Theoretical modeling predicts that the resulting amplitude increases rapidly with the luminosity of the star.…
We present some results of long term studies of pulsating stars conducted in the course of the OGLE and Araucaria projects. In particular very scarce eclipsing binaries containing pulsating stars are discussed. Such systems provide a unique…
Over the last decade, thanks to the successful space missions launched to detect stellar pulsations, Asteroseismology has produced an extraordinary revolution in astrophysics, unveiling a wealth of results on structural properties of stars…
The Virtual Observatory (VO) will revolutionise the way we do Astronomy, by allowing easy access to all astronomical data and by making the handling and analysis of datasets at various locations across the globe much simpler and faster. I…
Over the last decade Galactic planetary nebula discoveries have entered a golden age due to the emergence of high sensitivity, high resolution narrow-band surveys of the Galactic plane. These have been coupled with access to complimentary,…
The common - arguably ubiquitous - large-scale variability of optical and UV lines profiles of hot, massive stars is widely interpreted as the direct consequence of structured, variable winds. Many of the variability phenomena are observed…
Adaptive Optics is a prime example of how progress in observational astronomy can be driven by technological developments. At many observatories it is now considered to be part of a standard instrumentation suite, enabling ground-based…
The changing heavens have played a central role in the scientific effort of astronomers for centuries. Galileo's synoptic observations of the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus starting in 1610, provided strong refutation of Ptolemaic…
Despite their paucity, massive hot stars are real cosmic engines of fundamental importance in shaping our Universe, from its very early stages up to its current appearance. Understanding the physics of massive stars is then a key issue for…