Related papers: Large-scale time-series spectroscopy for stellar a…
The Gaia astrometric mission - the Hipparcos successor - is described in some detail, with its three instruments: the two (spectro)photometers (BP and RP) covering the range 330-1050 nm, the white light (G-band) imager dedicated to…
We present an overview of the main characteristics of several spectroscopic surveys designed to advance our understanding of the physical properties and evolution of massive stars. We also summarize key results obtained from the analysis of…
We present a review of recent studies of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy, in particular based on large samples of non-kinematically selected stars with available proper motions. The Milky Way is argued to be a reasonable…
We present a spectral decomposition technique that separates the contribution of different kinematic components in galaxies from the observed spectrum. This allows to study the kinematics and properties of the stellar populations of the…
In this paper we address the question whether age and metallicity effects can be disentangled with the aid of the broad-band colours and spectral indices from absorption feature strengths, so that the age of elliptical galaxies can be…
The beginning of the 21st century marked the "modern era of galaxy surveys" in astronomy. Rapid innovation in observing technology, combined with the base built by galaxy catalogs and atlases dating back centuries, sparked an explosion of…
Each galaxy is observed only once along its life, making galaxy evolution fundamentally an inverse statistical problem: time-dependent physics must be inferred from ensembles of single-epoch snapshots. To move beyond descriptive scaling…
This is a report on the findings of the SNR/cosmic-ray working group for the white paper on the status and future of ground-based gamma-ray astronomy. The white paper is an APS commissioned document, and the overall version has also been…
Star formation plays a central role in the evolution of galaxies and of the Universe as a whole. Studies of star-forming regions in the local universe have shown that star formation typically occurs in a clustered fashion. Building a…
Physical properties of stars such as luminosity, surface temperature, distance, or mass are measured from observations. These physical properties are of paramount importance to understand how stars are born, live, and die in the universe…
We propose to use relative galaxy ages as a means of constraining cosmological parameters. By measuring the age difference between two ensembles of old galaxies at somewhat different redshifts, one could determine the derivative of redshift…
If we are to develop a comprehensive and predictive theory of galaxy formation and evolution, it is essential that we obtain an accurate assessment of how and when galaxies assemble their stellar populations, and how this assembly varies…
The long-lived radioactive element thorium can potentially provide a simple and direct clock to determine the age of our Galaxy. Spectroscopic investigations of thorium in metal-poor stars have yielded some promising initial results. We…
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is collecting photometry and intermediate resolution spectra for ~ 10**5 stars in the thick-disk and stellar halo of the Milky Way. This massive dataset can be used to infer the properties of the stars…
Substellar multiplicity is a key outcome of the formation process. The biggest challenge for the next decade will be to distinguish between the formation history, environmental conditions, and dynamical evolution leading to the least…
Galaxy morphological and spectroscopic types should be nearly independent of apparent magnitude in a local, magnitude-limited sample. Recent luminosity function surveys based on morphological classification of galaxies are substantially…
Projected in the sky, galaxies are spatially-resolved objects. To understand how they formed and evolve it is necessary to study the spatial distribution of their observables. In this review talk, we briefly describe some scaling relations…
A simple solar scaling relation for estimating the ages of main-sequence stars from asteroseismic and spectroscopic data is developed. New seismic scaling relations for estimating mass and radius are presented as well, including a purely…
Galaxy evolution is driven by processes occurring across a wide range of scales, from star formation within giant molecular clouds (parsec scales) to outflows and secular evolution across entire galaxies (kpc scales), and the interplay…
Combined studies of variable stars and stellar clusters open great horizons, and they allow us to improve our understanding of stellar cluster formation and stellar evolution. In that prospect, the Gaia mission will provide astrometric,…