Related papers: Increasing the Discovery Space in Astrophysics - A…

Looking ahead to the next decade and imagining the landscape of astronomy in 2020, it is clear that astronomical surveys, large and small, plus extensive follow-up projects, will be a great engine of progress in our profession. Surveys have…

In response to the need for the Astro2020 Decadal Survey to explicitly engage early career astronomers, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted the Early Career Astronomer and Astrophysicist Focus Session (ECFS)…

The importance of the Decadal Survey in astrophysics is great; it deserves attention and revision. We make recommendations to increase the Survey's transparency and political legitimacy. The Astro2020 charge asks the Survey to "generate…

Over the past century, major advances in astronomy and astrophysics have been largely driven by improvements in instrumentation and data collection. With the amassing of high quality data from new telescopes, and especially with the advent…

The U.S. astronomy decadal surveys have been models for advice to government on how to apportion resources to optimise the scientific return on national investments in facilities and manpower. The U.S. is now gearing up to conduct its 2020…

Wide-angle surveys have been an engine for new discoveries throughout the modern history of astronomy, and have been among the most highly cited and scientifically productive observing facilities in recent years. This trend is likely to…

While still in its infancy, the budding field of gravitational-wave astronomy has so far exceeded most expectations, and the achievements that have already been made bode well for the decade to come. While the discoveries made possible by…

The Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics created five panels to identify the science themes that would define the field's research frontiers in the coming decade. I will describe the conclusions of one of these, the Panel on…

The next decade affords tremendous opportunity to achieve the goals of Galactic archaeology. That is, to reconstruct the evolutionary narrative of the Milky Way, based on the empirical data that describes its current morphological,…

Over the past decade, research in resolved stellar populations has made great strides in exploring the nature of dark matter, in unraveling the star formation, chemical enrichment, and dynamical histories of the Milky Way and nearby…

Astrophysics facilities have been of tremendous importance for planetary science. The flagship space observatory Hubble Space Telescope has produced ground-breaking Solar System science, but when launched it did not even have the capability…

Space-based experiments today can uniquely address important questions related to the fundamental laws of Nature. In particular, high-accuracy physics experiments in space can test relativistic gravity and probe the physics beyond the…

Asteroseismology is the only observational tool in astronomy that can probe the interiors of stars, and is a benchmark method for deriving fundamental properties of stars and exoplanets. Over the coming decade, space-based and ground-based…

The past two decades have seen a tremendous investment in observational facilities that promise to reveal new and unprecedented discoveries about the universe. In comparison, the investment in theoretical work is completely dwarfed, even…

The search for life beyond the Solar System-a major part of the Planetary Systems thematic area of the Astro2020 Decadal process-includes the search for technological life. Although financial support for such searches at the NSF and NASA…

Policy Brief on "Latest Developments and Opportunities in Sky Survey", distilled from the corresponding panel that was part of the discussions during S20 Policy Webinar on Astroinformatics for Sustainable Development held on 6-7 July 2023.…

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 WGLA of the AAS (http://www.aas.org/labastro/) promotes collaboration and exchange of knowledge between astronomy and planetary sciences and the laboratory sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology). Laboratory data needs of ongoing and…

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…

Electromagnetic observations of the sky have been the basis for our study of the Universe for millennia, cosmic ray studies are now entering their second century, the first neutrinos from an astrophysical source were identified three…