A group of 72 members of the astrochemistry and spectroscopy communities assembled at Emory University in October, 2012, to discuss the state-of-the art in molecular laboratory spectroscopic techniques used to study molecules of astrophysical interest, and highlight recent successes in laboratory efforts that complement new astronomical observations. The format of the meeting facilitated detailed discussion of the needs for collecting and interpreting molecular spectroscopic information to support observational astrophysics in the era of Far-IR astronomy. We present the findings and recommendations from this workshop in this report. The participants in this workshop identified the development of new laboratory capabilities that offer rapid, broadband, high-resolution, high-sensitivity measurements of molecular spectra in the frequency ranges that overlap with new observational facilities as the top priority for far-infrared laboratory astrophysics initiatives over the next 5-10 years. An additional major need is the development of suitable analysis tools for broadband molecular spectra from both the laboratory and space; though such efforts should be conducted within the framework of larger collaborative funding structures, rather than through single-PI efforts, so as to provide tools that are generally applicable rather than highly specialized. Additional efforts in theory, computation, and modeling that support these goals are also important for advancing this field.
The ESO workshop "Ground-based thermal infrared astronomy" was held on-line October 12-16, 2020. Originally planned as a traditional in-person meeting at ESO in Garching in April 2020, it was rescheduled and transformed into a fully on-line event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With 337 participants from 36 countries the workshop was a resounding success, demonstrating the wide interest of the astronomical community in the science goals and the toolkit of ground-based thermal infrared astronomy.
Thick fully depleted CCDs, while enabling wide spectral response, also present challenges in understanding the systematic errors due to 3D charge transport. This 2014 Workshop on Precision Astronomy with Fully Depleted CCDs covered progress that has been made in the testing and modeling of these devices made since a workshop by the same name in 2013. Presentations covered the science drivers, CCD characterization, laboratory measurements of systematics, calibration, and different approaches to modeling the response and charge transport. The key issue is the impact of these CCD sensor features …
This article is based on the tutorial we gave at the hands-on workshop of the ICRANet-ISFAHAN Astronomy Meeting. We first introduce the basic theory of machine learning and sort out the whole process of training a neural network. We then demonstrate this process with an example of inferring redshifts from SDSS spectra. To emphasize that machine learning for astronomy is easy to get started, we demonstrate that the most basic CNN network can be used to obtain high accuracy, we also show that with simple modifications, the network can be converted for classification problems and also to processi…
SURF is the collaborative ICT organisation for Dutch education & research and coordinates the national e-infrastructure (surf.nl). To accelerate scientific discovery, SURF invests in, operates and explores high-end IT solutions for and with researchers in the Netherlands. In this ADASS 2019 contribution we present our latest developments in high performance and high throughput cloud computing. These developments are particularly relevant for Astronomy, as this science domain: (i) generates large (Petabyte sized) data collections, (ii) uses rapid release and deployment schemes for their softwar…
Recent detections of gravitational wave signals and neutrinos from gamma-ray sources have ushered in the era of multi-messenger astronomy, while highlighting the importance of gamma-ray observations for this emerging field. AMEGO-X, the All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-Ray Observatory eXplorer, is an MeV gamma-ray instrument that will survey the sky in the energy range from hundreds of keV to one GeV with unprecedented sensitivity. AMEGO-X will detect gamma-ray photons both via Compton interactions and pair production processes, bridging the "sensitivity gap" between hard X-rays and high-energy gam…
The recent discovery of the electromagnetic counterpart of the gravitational wave source GW170817 has demonstrated the huge informative power of multi-messenger observations. Late '20s and early '30s will be a mature era for multi-messenger astronomy. Consolidated network of second generation gravitational wave detectors, such as Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo, KAGRA and LIGO-India, will be further powered by the contribution from third generation interferometers such as Einstein Telescope and/or Cosmic Explorer. Several astrophysical sources detectable in GWs are expected to radiate in the …
The Burst Observer and Optical Transient Exploring System (BOOTES) was first designed as an asset of autonomous telescopes that started to be deployed in 1998, taking 24 years to be fully developed around the Earth. Nowadays BOOTES has became a global network of robotic telescopes, being the first one present in all continents, as of 2022. Here we present the details of the network and review its achievements over the last two decades regarding follow-up observations of high-energy transient events. Moreover, considering the recent operations of neutrino and gravitational wave detectors, some …
SPHEREx is a proposed NASA MIDEX mission selected for Phase A study. SPHEREx would carry out the first all-sky spectral survey in the near infrared. At the end of its two-year mission, SPHEREx would obtain 0.75-to-5$μ$m spectra of every 6.2 arcsec pixel on the sky, with spectral resolution R>35 and a 5-$σ$ sensitivity AB$>$19 per spectral/spatial resolution element. More details concerning SPHEREx are available at http://spherex.caltech.edu. The SPHEREx team has proposed three specific science investigations to be carried out with this unique data set: cosmic inflation, interstellar and circum…
GHz radio astronomy has played a fundamental role in the recent dazzling discovery of GW170817, a neutron star (NS)-NS merger observed in both gravitational waves (GWs) and light at all wavelengths. Here we show how the expected progress in sensitivity of ground-based GW detectors over the next decade calls for U.S.-based GHz radio arrays to be improved beyond current levels. We discuss specifically how several new scientific opportunities would emerge in multi-messenger time-domain astrophysics if a next generation GHz radio facility with sensitivity and resolution $10\times$ better than the …
Data challenges are emerging as powerful tools with which to answer fundamental astronomical questions. Time-domain astronomy lends itself to data challenges, particularly in the era of classification and anomaly detection. With improved sensitivity of wide-field surveys in optical and radio wavelengths from surveys like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), we are entering the large-volume era of transient astronomy. I highlight some recent time-domain challenges, with particular focus on the Photometric LSST Astronomical Ti…
Experience suggests that structural issues in how institutional Astrophysics approaches data-driven science and the development of discovery technology may be hampering the community's ability to respond effectively to a rapidly changing environment in which increasingly complex, heterogeneous datasets are challenging our existing information infrastructure and traditional approaches to analysis. We stand at the confluence of a new epoch of multimessenger science, remote co-location of data and processing power and new observing strategies based on miniaturized spacecraft. Significant effort w…
Report of the Kavli-IAU Workshop on Global Coordination, "Probing the Universe from far-infrared to millimeter wavelengths: future facilities and their synergies"
Whilst astronomy as a science is historically founded on observations at optical wavelengths, studying the Universe in other bands has yielded remarkable discoveries, from pulsars in the radio, signatures of the Big Bang at submm wavelengths, through to high energy emission from accreting, gravitationally-compact objects and the discovery of gamma-ray bursts. Unsurprisingly, the result of combining multiple wavebands leads to an enormous increase in diagnostic power, but powerful insights can be lost when the sources studied vary on timescales shorter than the temporal separation between obser…
We discuss the future of gravitational theories in the framework of gravitational wave (GW) astronomy after the recent GW detections (the events GW150914, GW151226, GW170104, GW170814, GW170817 and GW170608). In particular, a calculation of the frequency and angular dependent response function that a GW detector would see if massive modes from f(R) theories or scalar tensor gravity (STG) were present, allowing for sources incident from any direction on the sky, is shown. In addition, through separate theoretical results which do not involve the recent GW detections, we show that f(R) theories …
Astronomy is entering an era of data-driven discovery, due in part to modern machine learning (ML) techniques enabling powerful new ways to interpret observations. This shift in our scientific approach requires us to consider whether we can trust the black box. Here, we overview methods for an often-overlooked step in the development of ML models: building community trust in the algorithms. Trust is an essential ingredient not just for creating more robust data analysis techniques, but also for building confidence within the astronomy community to embrace machine learning methods and results.
As the volume of data grows, astronomers are increasingly faced with choices on what data to keep -- and what to throw away. Recent work evaluating the JPEG2000 (ISO/IEC 15444) standards as a future data format standard in astronomy has shown promising results on observational data. However, there is still a need to evaluate its potential on other type of astronomical data, such as from numerical simulations. GERLUMPH (the GPU-Enabled High Resolution cosmological MicroLensing parameter survey) represents an example of a data intensive project in theoretical astrophysics. In the next phase of p…
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Wide-Fast Deep (WFD) sky survey will reach unprecedented surface brightness depths over tens of thousands of square degrees. Surface brightness photometry has traditionally been a challenge. Current algorithms which combine object detection with sky estimation systematically over-subtract the sky, biasing surface brightness measurements at the faint end and destroying or severely compromising low surface brightness light. While it has recently been shown that properly accounting for undetected faint galaxies and the wings of brighter objects can in principle recov…
This is the stars chapter of the Kavli workshop report, which resulted from the community-based study of needed US OIR capabilities in the LSST era. The full report, which will include this chapter, is anticipated to be available in Fall 2016. See NOAO website (http://www.noao.edu/meetings/lsst-oir-study/) for more details.
As part of the National Science Foundation funded "Gemini in the Era of MultiMessenger Astronomy" (GEMMA) program, Gemini Observatory is developing GNAO, a widefield adaptive optics (AO) facility for Gemini-North on Maunakea, the only 8m-class open-access telescope available to the US astronomers in the northern hemisphere. GNAO will provide the user community with a queue-operated Multi-Conjugate AO (MCAO) system, enabling a wide range of innovative solar system, Galactic, and extragalactic science with a particular focus on synergies with JWST in the area of time-domain astronomy. The GNAO e…
The era of data-intensive astronomy is being ushered in with the increasing size and complexity of observational data across wavelength and time domains, the development of algorithms to extract information from this complexity, and the computational power to apply these algorithms to the growing repositories of data. Data-intensive approaches are pushing the boundaries of nearly all fields of astronomy, from exoplanet science to cosmology, and they are becoming a critical modality for how we understand the universe. The success of these approaches range from the discovery of rare or unexpecte…
nmma: An extended Bayesian framework for Nuclear Multimessenger Astronomy in the Era of Next-Generation Detectors
Universität Potsdam（波茨坦大学）；Universiteit Utrecht（乌得勒支大学）；Nikhef（尼赫夫国家粒子物理研究所）；University of Ferrara（费拉拉大学）；INFN, Sezione di Ferrara（意大利国家核物理学院费拉拉分部）；INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico d’Abruzzo（意大利国家天体物理研究所阿布鲁佐天文台）；U. Minnesota（明尼苏达大学）；Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut)（马克斯·普朗克引力物理研究所（爱因斯坦研究所））
Decades long monitoring of millisecond pulsars, which exhibit highly stable rotational periods, in pulsar timing array experiments is on the threshold of discovering nanohertz stochastic gravitational wave background. This paper describes the Indian Pulsar timing array (InPTA) experiment, which employs the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT) for timing an ensemble of millisecond pulsars for this purpose. We highlight InPTA's observation strategies and analysis methods, which are relevant for a future PTA experiment with the more sensitive Square Kilometer Array (SKA) telescope. We…
For nearly four years, NASA's Kepler space telescope searched for planets like Earth around more than 150,000 stars similar to the Sun. In 2008 with in-kind support from several technology companies, our non-profit organization established the Pale Blue Dot Project, an adopt-a-star program that supports scientific research on the stars observed by the Kepler mission. To help other astronomy educators conduct successful fundraising efforts, I describe how this innovative crowdfunding program successfully engaged the public over the past seven years to help support an international team in an er…
European Southern Observatory（欧洲南方天文台）；Institute of Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院物理研究所）；IRFU, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay（法国原子能和替代能源署法国研究和技术核物理研究所巴黎萨克雷大学）；Department of Astronomy, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Belgrade（贝尔格莱德大学数学学院天文学系）；Hamburger Sternwarte, Universität Hamburg（汉堡大学天文台）；INAF OACN（意大利国家天体物理研究所卡塔尼亚天文台）；Astronomical Institute of Charles University（查理大学天文研究所）；Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias（加那利群岛天体物理研究所）
Deep Investigation of Neutral Gas Origins (DINGO): Options for the Processing and Storage of Radio Astronomy Data for robust Deep Spectral Line Imaging in the SKA-Era using uv-Grids
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, University of Western Australia（西澳大利亚大学国际无线电天文研究中心）；Australian SKA Regional Centre (AusSRC), University of Western Australia（西澳大利亚大学澳大利亚SKA区域中心）；Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre（珀西超级计算研究中心）；Oak Ridge National Laboratory（橡树岭国家实验室）；Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO Space & Astronomy（CSIRO空间与天文澳大利亚望远镜国家设施）；ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D)（ARC三维全天空天体物理学卓越中心）
Astronomy has entered the multi-messenger data era and Machine Learning has found widespread use in a large variety of applications. The exploitation of synoptic (multi-band and multi-epoch) surveys, like LSST (Legacy Survey of Space and Time), requires an extensive use of automatic methods for data processing and interpretation. With data volumes in the petabyte domain, the discrimination of time-critical information has already exceeded the capabilities of human operators and crowds of scientists have extreme difficulty to manage such amounts of data in multi-dimensional domains. This work i…
PhoPS: An automated photometric pipeline for survey-era astronomy
Türkiye National Observatories, TUG（土耳其国家天文台）；The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK)（土耳其科学技术研究委员会）；Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC)（安达卢西亚天体物理研究所）；LIRA, CNRS UMR8254, Observatoire de Paris（巴黎天文台）
Photonic technologies offer numerous advantages for astronomical instruments such as spectrographs and interferometers owing to their small footprints and diverse range of functionalities. Operating at the diffraction-limit, it is notoriously difficult to efficiently couple such devices directly with large telescopes. We demonstrate that with careful control of both the non-ideal pupil geometry of a telescope and residual wavefront errors, efficient coupling with single-mode devices can indeed be realised. A fibre injection was built within the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCE…
As astronomy moves into the era of large-scale time-domain surveys, we are seeing a flood of new transient and variable sources which will reach biblical proportions with the advent of LSST. A key strategic challenge for astronomy in this era is the lack of suitable spectroscopic followup facilities. In response to this need, we have developed the PolyOculus approach for producing large-area-equivalent telescopes by using fiber optics to link modules of multiple semi-autonomous, small, inexpensive, commercial-off-the-shelf telescopes. Crucially, this scalable design has construction costs whic…
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the SKA Era
Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW（苏黎世应用科学大学人工智能中心）；Institute of Business Information Technology, Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW（苏黎世应用科学大学商业信息技术研究所）
An agentic framework for gravitational-wave counterpart association in the multi-messenger era
Department of Astronomy, School of Physics（天文学系，物理系）；Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics（天体物理研究所）；Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy（引力波天文研究所）；School of Information Science and Technology（信息科学与技术学院）；National Astronomical Observatories（国家天文台）
