Related papers: ESA Science Programme Missions: Contributions and …

Since its launch in April 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has produced an increasing flow of scientific results. The large number of refereed publications based on HST data allows a detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of this…

Since July 2014, the ESA Gaia mission has been surveying the entire sky down to magnitude 20.7 in the visible. In addition to the millions of stars, thousands of Solar System Objects (SSOs) are observed daily. By comparing their positions…

We describe the target selection procedure by which stars are selected for 2-minute and 20-second observations by TESS. We first list the technical requirements of the TESS instrument and ground systems processing that limit the total…

We present key results from the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey (HOPS): spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and model fits of 330 young stellar objects, predominantly protostars, in the Orion molecular clouds. This is the largest sample of…

The ever-growing need of data preservation and their systematic analysis contributing to sustainable development of the society spurred in the past decade,numerous Big Data projects and initiatives are focusing on the Earth Observation…

ESO and ESA agreed to establish a number of Working Groups to explore possible synergies between these two major European astronomical institutions. This Working Group's mandate was to concentrate on fundamental questions in cosmology, and…

The NASA LISA Study Team was tasked to study how NASA might support US scientists to participate and maximize the science return from the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission. LISA is gravitational wave observatory led by ESA…

Scientific data collected at ESO's observatories are freely and openly accessible online through the ESO Science Archive Facility. In addition to the raw data straight out of the instruments, the ESO Science Archive also contains four…

The European Virtual Observatory (VO) initiative organises regular VO schools since 2008. The goals are twofold: i) to expose early-career European astronomers to the variety of currently available VO tools and services so that they can use…

The Gaia space project, planned for launch in 2011, is one of the ESA cornerstone missions, and will provide astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic data of very high quality for about one billion stars brighter than V=20. This will…

Interstellar objects (ISOs) represent a compelling and under-explored category of celestial bodies, providing physical laboratories to understand the formation of our solar system and probe the composition and properties of material formed…

The Herschel Space Observatory is a corner stone mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) scientific program. With its spatial resolution, sensitivity and spectral range (60 to 670 microns) Herschel will provide astronomers with unique…

As part of NASA's mission to explore habitable planets orbiting nearby stars, this paper explores the detection and characterization capabilities of a 4-m space telescope plus 50-m starshade located at the Earth-Sun L2 point, a.k.a. the New…

With high over-subscription rates and significant operational costs, observatories must ensure that their operations are efficient and effective. A number of key performance indicators are generally used to evaluate the observatory's…

The next generation of large ground-based optical and infrared telescopes will provide new challenges for designers of astronomical instrumentation. The varied science cases for these extremely large telescopes (ELTs) require a large range…

The Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics (Athena) is the X-ray observatory mission selected by ESA within its Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme to address the Hot and Energetic Universe scientific theme. The ESO-Athena Synergy…

Over the past few years, there have been a few studies on the development of an interest in science and scientists' views on public outreach. Yet, to date, there has been no global study regarding astronomers' views on these matters.…

Remote observing can be broadly defined as those observations where the astronomer is not physically present at the telescope. Different implementations presently in use include robotic telescopes, service observing with or without…

In the Virtual Observatory era, where we intend to expose scientists (or software agents on their behalf) to a stream of observations from all existing facilities, the ability to access and to further interpret the origin, relationships,…

The High-Resolution Multi-Object Spectrograph (HRMOS) is a facility instrument that we plan to propose for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), following the initial presentation at the VLT 2030…