Related papers: The purpose of astronomy
In the distant past, astronomy was often intertwined with religion into a unified cosmos. As science became a distinct cultural enterprise, astronomy has witnessed a variety of rich interactions with other fields. Mathematical statistics…
Over the last ten years there has been a large increase in the number of projects using sound to represent astronomical data and concepts. Motivation for these projects includes the potential to enhance scientific discovery within complex…
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming astronomical research, yet the scientific community has largely treated this transformation as an engineering challenge rather than an epistemological one. This perspective article argues that…
We shall discuss some aspects of science and technology, their increasing role in the society, the fast advances in modern science, the apparent decrease of interest of the young generation in basic sciences, the importance of proper…
Physical cosmology tries to understand the Universe at large with its origin and evolution. Observational and experimental situations in cosmology do not allow us to proceed purely based on the empirical means. We examine in which sense our…
Cultural astronomy reveals ways in which perception and culture have shaped the interpretation of the night sky.
Observatories, Institutes and Centers that support major astronomical facilities have, for decades, played a key role in maximizing the scientific return from their facilities and telescopes. It is crucial to realize that an "observatory"…
We present a state-of-the-art report on visualization in astrophysics. We survey representative papers from both astrophysics and visualization and provide a taxonomy of existing approaches based on data analysis tasks. The approaches are…
The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for…
This article analyses the current state of Astronomy in Argentina and describes its origins. We briefly describe the institutions where astronomical research takes place, the observational facilities available, the training of staff and…
Global citizenship plays an important role in today's schools. Many subjects taught in schools have already incorporated such ideas. Science and physics have also followed suit. However, when dealing with astronomy - a topic so seemingly…
Cosmology differs in some respects significantly from other sciences, primarily because of its intimate association with issues of a conceptual and philosophical nature. Because cosmology in the broader sense relates to the world views held…
Astronomers have come to recognize the benefits of photonics, often in combination with optical systems, in solving longstanding experimental problems in Earth-based astronomy. Here, we explore some of the recent advances made possible by…
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…
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…
We introduce \emph{Astronomy and Computing}, a new journal for the growing population of people working in the domain where astronomy overlaps with computer science and information technology. The journal aims to provide a new communication…
The current and prospective status of astronomical research in Ukraine is discussed. A brief history of astronomical research in Ukraine is presented and the system organizing scientific activity is described, including astronomy education,…
Perhaps more than other physical sciences, astronomy is frequently statistical in nature. The objects under study are inaccessible to direct manipulation in the laboratory, so the astronomer is restricted to observing a few external…
The past fifty years have been an epoch of impressive progress in the field of astronomical technology. Practically all the technical tools, which we use today, have been developed during that time span. While the first half of this period…
At many universities, astronomy is a popular way for non-science majors to fulfill a general education requirement. Because general-education astronomy may be the only college-level science course taken by these students, it is the last…