Related papers: Paving the way to simultaneous multi-wavelength as…
This paper presents a tutorial explaining the use of Virtual Observatory tools in high energy astrophysics. Most of the tools used in this paper were developed at the Strasbourg astronomical Data Center and we show how they can be applied…
After the discovery of the gravitational waves and the observation of neutrinos of cosmic origin, we have entered a new and exciting era where cosmic rays, neutrinos, photons and gravitational waves will be used simultaneously to study the…
The next generation of gravitational wave detectors and electromagnetic telescopes are beckoning the onset of the multi-messenger era and the exciting science that lies ahead. Multi-messenger strong gravitational lensing will help probe…
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,…
Astronomical observations already produce vast amounts of data through a new generation of telescopes that cannot be analyzed manually. Next-generation telescopes such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the Square Kilometer Array…
One of the major goals of observational cosmology is to acquire empirical data that has the diagnostic power to develop the theoretical modelling of the high-redshift universe, ultimately leading to an accurate understanding of the…
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…
Gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy is transforming our understanding of the Universe by probing phenomena invisible to electromagnetic observatories. A comprehensive exploration of the GW frequency spectrum is essential to fully harness this…
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…
Modern astronomy increasingly relies upon systematic surveys, whose dedicated telescopes continuously observe the sky across varied wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum; some surveys also observe non-electromagnetic…
Radio pulsars have been responsible for many astonishing astrophysical and fundamental physics breakthroughs since their discovery 50 years ago. In this review I will discuss many of the highlights, most of which were only possible because…
How did galaxies form and evolve? This is one of the most challenging questions in astronomy today. Answering it requires a careful combination of observational and theoretical work to reliably determine the observed properties of cosmic…
Observational astrophysics uses sophisticated technology to collect and measure electromagnetic and other radiation from beyond the Earth. Modern observatories produce large, complex datasets and extracting the maximum possible information…
Observations of the cosmic microwave background represent a remarkable source of information for modern cosmology. Besides providing impressive support for the Big Bang model itself, they quantify the overall framework, or background, for…
Data analysis in space sciences has been performed exclusively visually for years, despite the fact that the largest amount of data belongs to non-visible portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. This, on the one hand, limits the study of…
Data volumes from multiple sky surveys have grown from gigabytes into terabytes during the past decade, and will grow from terabytes into tens (or hundreds) of petabytes in the next decade. This exponential growth of new data both enables…
We review some aspects of the current state of data-intensive astronomy, its methods, and some outstanding data analysis challenges. Astronomy is at the forefront of "big data" science, with exponentially growing data volumes and data…
One of the biggest problems faced by current and next-generation astronomical surveys is trying to produce large numbers of accurate cross identifications across a range of wavelength regimes with varying data quality and positional…
The past year has witnessed discovery of the first identified counterparts to a gravitational wave transient (GW 170817A) and a very high-energy neutrino (IceCube-170922A). These source identifications, and ensuing detailed studies, have…
Progress in astronomy comes from interpreting the signals encoded in the light received from distant objects: the distribution of light over the sky (images), over photon wavelength (spectrum), over polarization angle, and over time…