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Ground-based optical astronomy necessarily involves sensing the light of astronomical objects along with the contributions of many natural sources ranging from the Earth's atmosphere to cosmological light. In addition, astronomers have long…
Over the past decade, astronomers have been using an increasingly larger number of web-based applications and archives to conduct their research. However, despite the early success in creating links across projects and data centers, the…
The Moon is a primary focus of space exploration. Current navigation methods face significant limitations in providing precise location data for lunar missions. In particular, existing methods often require direct Line of Sight to Earth,…
A wide field space-based imaging telescope is necessary to fully exploit the technique of observing dark matter via weak gravitational lensing. This first paper in a three part series outlines the survey strategies and relevant instrumental…
Autonomous spacecraft relative navigation technology has been planned for and applied to many famous space missions. The development of on-board electronics systems has enabled the use of vision-based and LiDAR-based methods to achieve…
The MOND paradigm to the missing mass problem requires introducing a functional that is to be identified through observations and experiments. We consider AQUAL theory as a realization of the MOND. We show that the accurate value of the…
Astronomy provides a laboratory for extreme physics, a window into environments at extremes of distance, temperature and density that often can't be reproduced in Earth laboratories, or at least not right away. A surprising amount of the…
The active broadband (1 kHz-100 MHz) tripole antenna now envisaged to be placed on the European Lunar Lander located at the Lunar South Pole allows for sensitive measurements of the exosphere and ionosphere, and their interaction with the…
Exoplanet imaging using the solar gravitational lens is an enticing prospect. The fundamental physical properties of the lens, including its angular resolution and light amplification, promise exceptional capabilities. These expectations,…
The flat matter dominated Universe that dominated cosmological model building for much of the past 20 years does not correspond to the Universe in which we live. This has profound implications both for our understanding of dark matter, and…
On the 40th anniversary of the last human expedition to the Moon, I review the scientific legacy of the Apollo programme and argue that science would benefit from a human return to the Moon.
Neutrino astronomy has entered an exciting time with the completion of the first km3-scale neutrino telescope at the South Pole (IceCube) and the successful operation of the first under-sea neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean (Antares).…
We review the relatively new, internet-enabled, and rapidly-evolving field of citizen science, focusing on research projects in stellar, extragalactic and solar system astronomy that have benefited from the participation of members of the…
There is a long history of radio telescopes being used to augment the radio antennas regularly used to conduct telemetry, tracking, and command of deep space spacecraft. Radio telescopes are particularly valuable during short-duration…
Studying lunar dust is vital to the exploration of the Moon and other airless planetary bodies. The Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer (UVS) on board the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft conducted a series…
The internal antarctic plateau revealed in the last years to be a site with interesting potentialities for the astronomical applications due to the extreme dryness and low temperatures, the typical high altitude of the plateau, the weak…
Recent advances in optical atomic clocks and optical time transfer have enabled new possibilities in precision metrology for both tests of fundamental physics and timing applications. Here we describe a space mission concept that would…
Aperture synthesis radio telescopes generate images of celestial bodies from data obtained from several radio antennas. Placement of these antennas has always been a source of interesting problems. Often, several potentially contradictory…
I discuss the modalities of zenith observing with LMTs, their limitations and advantages. The main limitation comes from the relatively small regions of the sky that LMTs can access. The main advantage comes from low cost, for inexpensive…
In an era marked by renewed interest in lunar exploration and the prospect of establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon, innovative approaches supporting mission preparation and astronaut training are imperative. To this end,…