Related papers: Six Maxims of Statistical Acumen for Astronomical …
The body of photometric and astrometric data on stars in the Galaxy has been growing very fast in recent years (Hipparcos/Tycho, OGLE-3, 2-Mass, DENIS, UCAC2, SDSS, RAVE, Pan Starrs, Hermes, ...) and in two years ESA will launch the Gaia…
The concept of evaluation gaps captures potential discrepancies between what researchers value about their research, in particular research quality, and what metrics measure. The existence of evaluation gaps can give rise to questions about…
Current and future large astronomical surveys will yield multiparameter databases on millions or even billions of objects. The scientific exploitation of these will require powerful, robust, and automated classification tools tailored to…
Digital experimentation and measurement (DEM) capabilities -- the knowledge and tools necessary to run experiments with digital products, services, or experiences and measure their impact -- are fast becoming part of the standard toolkit of…
A (subjective) overview of Internet resources relevant to professional astronomers is given. Special emphasis is put on databases of astronomical objects and servers providing general information, e.g. on astronomical catalogues, finding…
A persistent challenge in astronomical machine learning is a systematic bias where predictions compress the dynamic range of true values-high values are consistently predicted too low while low values are predicted too high. Understanding…
The study explored the usage of astronomical observations for the identification and tracking of artificial satellites. Spacecraft streaks on astronomical images are a growing issue for the astronomical community. The increasing number of…
Highly Principled Data Science insists on methodologies that are: (1) scientifically justified, (2) statistically principled, and (3) computationally efficient. An astrostatistics collaboration, together with some reminiscences, illustrates…
The changing heavens have played a central role in the scientific effort of astronomers for centuries. Galileo's synoptic observations of the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus starting in 1610, provided strong refutation of Ptolemaic…
While both society and astronomy have evolved greatly over the past fifty years, the academic institutions and incentives that shape our field have remained largely stagnant. As a result, the astronomical community is faced with several…
Stellar astronomy, fueled by massive capital investments, advances in numerical modeling and theory, is resurgent and arguably is on the verge of a magnificent renaissance. Powerful time domain optical surveys, both on ground and in space,…
In this paper we address the consumption of energy by astronomers while performing their professional duties. Although we find that astronomy uses a negligible fraction of the US energy budget, the rate at which energy is consumed by an…
The past century has seen a steady increase in the need of estimating and predicting complex systems and making (possibly critical) decisions with limited information. Although computers have made possible the numerical evaluation of…
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…
Rapid progress in the capabilities of machine learning approaches in natural language processing has culminated in the rise of large language models over the last two years. Recent works have shown unprecedented adoption of these for…
Satellite mission planning for Earth observation satellites is a combinatorial optimization problem that consists of selecting the optimal subset of imaging requests, subject to constraints, to be fulfilled during an orbit pass of a…
Deep learning has generated diverse perspectives in astronomy, with ongoing discussions between proponents and skeptics motivating this review. We examine how neural networks complement classical statistics, extending our data analytical…
Fundamental changes are taking place in the way we do astronomy. In twenty years time, it is likely that most astronomers will never go near a cutting-edge telescope, which will be much more efficiently operated in service mode. They will…
Fundamental coding and software development skills are increasingly necessary for success in nearly every aspect of astronomical and astrophysical research as large surveys and high resolution simulations become the norm. However,…
Adaptive Optics is a prime example of how progress in observational astronomy can be driven by technological developments. At many observatories it is now considered to be part of a standard instrumentation suite, enabling ground-based…