Related papers: Development in Astronomy and Space Science in Afri…
I review the status of science with wide field surveys. For many decades surveys have been the backbone of astronomy, and the main engine of discovery, as we have mapped the sky at every possible wavelength. Surveys are an efficient use of…
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…
Overview of the determination of astronomical distances from a metrological standpoint. Distances are considered from the Solar System (planetary distances) to extragalactic distances, with a special emphasis on the fundamental step of the…
Future prospects in observational galaxy evolution are reviewed from a personal perspective. New insights will especially come from high-redshift integral field kinematic data and similar low-redshift observations in very large and…
Astroparticle physics has evolved as an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of particle physics, astronomy and cosmology. Over the last two decades, it has moved from infancy to technological maturity and is now envisaging projects…
Small satellite platforms with high performance avionics are becoming more affordable. So far, with a few exceptions, small satellites have been mainly dedicated to earth observation. However, astronomy is a fascinating field with a history…
In the last decade a new generation of telescopes and sensors has allowed the production of a very large amount of data and astronomy has become, a data-rich science; this transition is often labeled as: "data revolution" and "data…
The last 20 years have seen an explosion in our understanding of the large-scale distribution and motions of galaxies in the nearby universe. The field has moved from a largely qualitative, morphological description of the structures seen…
Cultural astronomy reveals ways in which perception and culture have shaped the interpretation of the night sky.
The concrete vision of having Africa as a leader sharing equivalent responsibilities and deliverables towards the global scientific societies turn out to be more obvious by time. Africa is not an exception when it comes to advanced science…
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…
The National Academy Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS) made a recommendation to study a large/medium-class dedicated space telescope for planetary science, going beyond the Discovery-class dedicated planetary space…
The field of astronomy is starting to generate more data than can be managed, served and processed by current techniques. This paper has outlined practices for developing next-generation tools and techniques for surviving this data tsunami,…
This paper describes some of the astronomical effects that could be important for understanding the ice ages, historic climate changes and the recent temperature increase. These include changes in the sun's luminosity, periodic changes in…
Dwarf galaxies provide opportunities for drawing inferences about the processes in the early universe by observing our "cosmological backyard"-the Local Group and its vicinity. This special issue of the open-access journal Advances in…
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…
We review the current state of data mining and machine learning in astronomy. 'Data Mining' can have a somewhat mixed connotation from the point of view of a researcher in this field. If used correctly, it can be a powerful approach,…
Sky surveys represent a fundamental data basis for astronomy. We use them to map in a systematic way the universe and its constituents, and to discover new types of objects or phenomena. We review the subject, with an emphasis on the…
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…
This article gives an overview, aimed at theoretical particle physicists, of some recent developments in cosmology.