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We have had the chance to live through a fascinating revolution in measuring the fundamental empirical cosmological Hubble law. The key progress is analysed : 1) improvement of observational means (ground-based radio and optical…
Submillimeter and millimeter wavelengths provide a unique view of the Universe, from the gas and dust that fills and surrounds galaxies to the chromosphere of our own Sun. Current single-dish facilities have presented a tantalising view of…
Astronomy provides a laboratory for extreme physics, a window into environments at extremes of distance, temperature and density that often can't be reproduced in Earth laboratories, or at least not right away. A surprising amount of the…
Abridged: The golden age of astrophysics is upon us with both grand discoveries (extra-solar planets, dark matter, dark energy) and precision cosmology. Fundamental understanding of the working of stars and galaxies is within reach, thanks…
Full sky coverage with 30-40 meter-class telescopes is essential to answer fundamental questions in Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Physics, such as the composition of the Universe and the formation of the first stars and supermassive black…
In the next 30 years, a new generation of space and ground-based telescopes will permit to obtain multi-frequency observations of faint sources and, for the first time in human history, to achieve a deep, almost synoptical monitoring of the…
Astronomy is the study of the Universe and all the objects that it comprises. Our attention is therefore usually focused beyond Earth, home to the only form of life known today. However, how can we continue to explore the secrets of the…
Cosmology is undergoing an explosive period of activity, fueled both by new, accurate astrophysical data and by innovative theoretical developments. Cosmological parameters such as the total density of the Universe and the rate of…
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…
Astrophotonics lies at the interface of astronomy and photonics. This burgeoning field -- now formally recognized by the optics community -- has emerged over the past decade in response to the increasing demands of astronomical…
Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has grappled with the big questions of existence and creation. Modern cosmology seeks to answer some of these questions using a combination of mathematics and measurement. The questions people hope…
Astrophotonics is a burgeoning field that lies at the interface of photonics and modern astronomical instrumentation. Here we provide a pedagogical review of basic photonic functions that enable modern instruments, and give an overview of…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has made startling discoveries regarding the early universe. It has revealed galaxies as soon as 300 million years after the Big Bang, challenging current galaxy formation models. Additionally, it has…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
One of the most spectacular scientific breakthroughs in past decades was using measurements of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to test precisely our understanding of the history and composition of the Universe.…
Planetary science beyond the boundaries of our Solar System is today in its infancy. Until a couple of decades ago, the detailed investigation of the planetary properties was restricted to objects orbiting inside the Kuiper Belt. Today, we…
The low surface brightness Universe holds clues to the first formation of galaxies. Specifically, the shape and morphology of local stellar haloes have encoded in them the early formation history of their parent galaxies. Early progenitor…
We describe observations in the nearby universe (<100 Mpc) with a 10-m or larger space-based telescope having imaging and spectral capabilities in the range 912-9000 \AA that would enable advances in the fields of massive stars, young…
Modern astrophysics is undergoing a revolution. As detector technology has advanced, and astronomers have been able to study the sky with finer temporal detail, a rich diversity of sources which vary on timescales from years down to a few…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed extremely distant galaxies at unprecedentedly early cosmic epochs from its deep imaging using the technique of photometric redshift estimation, with its subsequent spectroscopy confirming…