相关论文: Why the Northern Hemisphere Needs a 30-40 m Telesc…
Planet formation remains a fundamentally important yet poorly understood process. Protoplanetary disks, the birthplaces of planetary systems, exhibit a wide range of substructures that are increasingly interpreted as signatures of…
The processes that transform gas and dust in circumstellar disks into diverse exoplanets remain poorly understood. One key pathway is to study exoplanets as they form in their young ($\sim$few~Myr) natal disks. Extremely Large Telescopes…
Full sky coverage with 30-40 meter-class telescopes is essential to answer fundamental questions in Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Physics, such as the composition of the Universe and the formation of the first stars and supermassive black…
Small Solar system Objects (SSOs) preserve the physical, chemical, and dynamical signatures of the Sun's protoplanetary disk. Upcoming surveys will discover vast numbers of new objects, yet their scientific value will depend on follow-up…
We outline the science case for a 30-40 m optical/infrared telescope in the Northern Hemisphere, optimised for transformative time-domain astronomy in the 2040s. Upcoming multi-wavelength and multi-messenger facilities will reveal fast,…
By the 2040s--50s, facilities such as \emph{Gaia}, WEAVE, 4MOST, Rubin, \emph{Euclid}, \emph{Roman}, and the ESO ELT will have transformed our global view of the Milky Way. Yet key questions will remain incompletely resolved: a detailed…
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will transform our knowledge of the outer planets and their satellite systems; however the visibility of unique targets of opportunity with high scientific value will be reduced for northern objects.…
A 30 m class optical/near-IR telescope in the Northern Hemisphere, equipped for diffraction-limited imaging and high-resolution, multi-object spectroscopy of faint stars, would enable a transformational investigation of the formation and…
The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics. Planets are believed to form out of the material in circumstellar disks known to exist around young stars, and which are a by-product of the star…
We have now accumulated a wealth of observations of the planet-formation environment and of mature planetary systems. These data allow us to test and refine theories of gas-giant planet formation by placing constraints on the conditions and…
The discovery of thousands of exoplanets has shown that the birth of planets is a very efficient process in nature. Several physical mechanisms have been proposed to describe the assembly of planets in disks surrounding young stars.…
Dwarf galaxies dominate the galaxy population in the nearby Universe and occupy the regime where feedback, reionization, and environment exert their strongest influence on galaxy formation. Despite their importance, detailed spectroscopic…
Circumstellar disks are the sites of planet formation, and the very high incidence of extrasolar planets implies that most of them actually form planetary systems. Studying the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks can thus place…
A detailed understanding of the physics of star and planet formation requires study of individual objects as well as statistical assessment of global properties and evolutionary trends. Observational investigations of circumstellar material…
Transmission and eclipse spectroscopy have been invaluable tools for the characterisation of extrasolar planet atmospheres. While they will continue to provide many new insights and discoveries in the decade(s) to come, these methods are…
This document discusses the three main lines expected to dominate massive-star research in the 2040s, namely: (1) The role of metallicity in stellar evolution, especially in determining the end products such as gravitational-wave…
Despite the revolution in our knowledge resulting from the detection of planets around mature stars, we know almost nothing about planets orbiting young stars because rapid rotation and active photospheres preclude detection by radial…
Protoplanetary disks are thought to be the birth places of planetary systems. The formation and the subsequent evolution of protoplanetary disks are regulated by the star formation process, which begins with the collapse of a cloud core to…
The envelopes and disks that surround protostars reflect the initial conditions of star and planet formation and govern the assembly of stellar masses. Characterizing these structures requires observations that span the near-infrared to…
Nuclear star clusters (NSCs) are dense, compact stellar systems only a few parsecs across, located at galaxy centers. Their small sizes make them difficult to resolve spatially. NSCs often coexist with massive black holes, and both trace…