Contemporary Astronomy Research Articles

AstroDLLC: Efficiently Reducing Storage and Transmission Costs for Massive Solar Observation Data via Deep Learning-based Lossless Compression

Effective data compression technology is essential for addressing data storage and transmission needs, especially given the escalating volume and complexity of data generated by contemporary astronomy. In this study, we propose utilizing deep learning-based lossless compression techniques to improve compression efficiency. We begin with a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the temporal and spatial redundancy in solar observation data. Based on this analysis, we introduce a novel deep learning-based framework called AstroDLLC for the lossless compression of astronomical solar images. AstroDLLC first segments high-resolution images into blocks to ensure that deep learning model training does not rely on high-computation power devices. It then addresses the non-normality of the partitioned data through simple reversible computational methods. Finally, it utilizes Bit-swap to train deep learning models that capture redundant features across multiple image frames, thereby enhancing compression efficiency. Comprehensive evaluations using data from the New Vacuum Solar Telescope reveal that AstroDLLC achieves a maximum compression ratio of 3.00 per image, surpassing Gzip, RICE, and other lossless technologies. The performance of AstroDLLC underscores its potential to address data compression challenges in astronomy.

Prediction and Distribution of Supernovae in the Epoch of Reionization Universal Model

The distribution of SNe during the epoch of reionization is usually determined by the Schmidt-kennicutt law, but the values and specific impact of different SNe types have been ambiguous. This study delves into the impact of Type Ia, Type Ib/Ic, & Type 2 Supernovae (SNe) effect on galaxy formation and distribution during the epoch of reionization, which in turn significantly influences and determines the symmetry and spread of elements, stars, galaxies, and even the cosmic microwave background radiation. The first phase determines the estimated amount of the SNe with neutral (hydrogen) fractions, photo-ionization rate for the H1 region, escape fraction with respect to redshift, and relative distribution of hydrogen number density all predicted by the THESAN simulations. The second phase determines the powers and scale of SNe in the reionization period using PDEs. The last phase calibrates the data on current SN remnants and progenitors such as mass, redshift, and composition to predict the evolution of SNE behavior since the epoch of reionization to contemporary astronomy. Then, using the provided data on SNe, this study will form a constructive model layering all three phases to determine the effect of different types of SNe during the ionization period and their patterns leading to today. Further research using the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope and telescopes specifically built to study redshift (like HERA and JWST) to have smaller error margins and more reliable data to determine a better fit for the distribution and impact of SNe in the Epoch.

Marvellous Conquests: The Adventures of Christianity and Astronomy in the Boy’s Own Paper (1889–1900)

This article argues two things about astronomy in the fiction of the Boy’s Own Paper (BOP) in the long 1890s: that astronomy is used to inspire muscular Christian moral improvement, broadly understood, and that we should understand this representation as enabled by the state of contemporary astronomy. At the close of the century, astronomy was an extremely popular science, and the locus of astronomical authority was unclear, permitting a wide variety of ideological positions within popularisation. This article first employs close readings of astronomical passages in the BOP from the 1890s to show that writers link adventure and heroism in frontier spaces to astronomy by using its most popular and engaging features alongside uncontested facts. Second, a discussion of A Marvellous Conquest: A Story of the Bayouda (1889), a serialised scientific romance by André Laurie, further demonstrates that the most important aspect of the use of astronomy within the BOP’s didactic project is its resonances with muscular Christianity rather than its scientific accuracy for educational purposes.

Evolution of Astronomical Knowledge: From Ancient Civilizations to Modern Physics

This paper embarks on a captivating journey, tracing the evolution from ancient civilizations to contemporary Astronomy, encompassing a spectrum of cultures, including Indian contributions and the advancements of Modern Astronomy. Despite the passage of 5,000 years, our comprehension of the solar system and the greater Cosmos remains profound, evoking a sense of wonder akin to the earliest observers. This article accentuates the pursuit of fresh educational prospects and vitality in life's exploration. Through the scrutiny of celestial domains beyond our world, it furnishes imperative insights into the foundational forces governing the Universe. The boundless expanse of the Cosmos continues to invigorate our inquisitiveness, propelling the innovation of scientific methodologies that exert extensive influence on our society. As our capabilities in space exploration advance, a cascade of new opportunities emerges, unfurling novel avenues for astronomical investigation.

Colourful Planets

Abstract In the Myth of Er, Plato describes the ‘Spindle of Necessity’, a contraption presenting the cosmos as guided by Sirens and Fates, and ascribes different colours to the planets (Rep. 616e-617a). This paper argues that Plato probably used astronomical data for that passage, but possibly gave them a metaphorical sense, and discusses the likelihood of his having used Mesopotamian sources. The second half of the paper studies receptions of and allusions to the image, with context-based astronomical, political, and metaphysical features. Cicero adjusted the image to contemporary astronomy, and to the political function of the cosmic structures in the Somnium Scipionis. His commentator Macrobius emphasizes empirical correctness, but possibly with metaphysical undertones. Apuleius’ Metamorphoses alludes to the image in a portrait of Isis, perhaps to refer to her metaphysical role. Finally, Proclus interprets the Platonic passage as primarily metaphysical, and pointing to truths beyond astronomical phenomena.

Sylvanus Morgan’s Library: Books for an Aspirational Heraldic Painter

Abstract This article analyses an unpublished manuscript in Cambridge University Library belonging to the arms-painter and author Sylvanus Morgan (1620–1693), which contains two iterations of a library list, one beginning in 1646 and the other in 1653. The notebook also features drafts for Morgan's subsequent publications, indicating the intersection between his reading and writing habits. His library is usually only discussed in relation to that of Robert Boyle, because the remains of both men's libraries were inextricably muddled together in a joint book auction after Morgan's death. Here, the Painter-Stainer's book collection is considered in its own right, showing his (unsuccessful) attempts to elevate the status of heraldic knowledge through reference to contemporary colour theory, astronomy and philosophy. An annotated transcription of Morgan's 1653 list of printed books is included in an appendix.

Science of the Vatican Observatory since 2000

Five research areas have been the focus of the scientific work of the Specola Vaticana (Vatican Observatory) over the past twenty years: planetary sciences, stellar astronomy, extragalactic astronomy, cosmology, and the development of the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (vatt). The choice of research program is left to the individual astronomers, all of whom work closely with lay collaborators around the world. Notable, especially in connection with the vatt, is the close coordination of the Specola with the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona. One unique strength of the Specola is its independence from short-term funding requirements. As a result of its stable funding, Specola astronomers can engage in long-term research programs such as surveys of meteorite properties, exoplanets, stellar clusters, and galaxy clusters, which may take ten or more years to come to fruition. In this way the Specola complements the large research programs of contemporary astronomy.

Tensions of Accountability: Scientists, Technicians and the Ethical Life of Data Production in Astronomy

ABSTRACTLaboratory ethnographies have emphasized the importance of trust and accountability among scientists and technicians when working in co-presence. But what happens to their relations when data production is outsourced, widely separating scientists and technicians? In contemporary astronomy, observing has largely become a service that observatory staff members do for researchers. This has increased the efficiency of telescope use while also resulting in arrangements prone to some researchers’ dissatisfaction and a raised visibility of technicians’ work. Attending ethnographically to situated evaluations reveals that some data-using researchers and data-producing technicians typify each other as moral figures: staff observers come to be seen as objects of blame and scientists as excessively demanding users. Wherever data travel, the quality and quantity of data can serve as ethical affordances for assigning blame to staff technicians. By contrast, the moral figure of the excessively demanding data user does not travel beyond the observatory, and the social accountability of interactions that visiting astronomers experience in the observatory’s control room is confined to its situated enactment. As scientist–technician interactions have become discontinuous and fraught, moral figures and ethical accounts thus travel unevenly in the landscape of data production, and the importance of social interactions remains often unrecognized.

Apocalipsis cosmológico: mitos y metáforas del fin en la astronomía contemporánea

Discoveries in observational astronomy and extragalactic astrophysics made during the xxth and xxist centuries and the subsequent proliferation of the specialties and subspecialties found in contemporary astronomy –such as radio astronomy, planetary geology, astronometry or X-ray astronomy, among many others– have allowed both the survival of the myth and its continual renewal. The sensational discoveries made by contemporary astronomy has re-mythologized the cosmos, producing new myths both of the origins of the Universe and it’s end while remaining consistent with the cosmological tradition within which it falls. In this paper, I suggest that both eschatological cosmology and the cosmological apocalypse have introduced an (astronomical) reoccupation of myth and metaphor.

Blazing The Trail For Astronomy Education Research

<p>Education research has long considered student learning of topics in astronomy and the space sciences, but astronomy education research as a sub-field of discipline-based education research is relatively new. Driven by a growing interest among higher education astronomy educators in improving the general education, introductory science survey course for non-science majoring undergraduates (“ASTRO 101”), contemporary astronomy education research is led by scholars with significant expertise in astronomy content. In this review, we outline the recent history of the growing field of discipline-based astronomy education research by analyzing graduate degrees earned, faculty involved, and major milestones, such as the appearance of archival, peer-reviewed professional journals. Astronomy education research as a field of discipline-based education research has made notable strides in the past few decades that distinguish it from the K-12 education research realm, and, in spite of some setbacks, continues to move forward as a growing and vibrant community of scholars.</p>

Tajikistan fireball network and results of photographic observations

The fireball network was created in Tajikistan with the aim of obtaining new data on the near-Earth meteoroid environment concerning large bodies, entering in the Earth’s atmosphere and producing fireballs, as well as new observational data on the activity of known meteor/fireball showers. The network consists of five observational stations equipped with the photographic fireball and digital all-sky cameras. Distances between the stations are from 53 to 184 km and the area covered by monitoring is around 11000 km2. For astrometric reduction of fireball photographs, a technique has been developed that allows positions of object details to be determined at an accuracy of about 1′, which is a sufficiently good result for negatives of this scale. In the method of photometric reduction, a dependence of measured widths of diurnal star trails on their magnitudes is used. As a result of processing of multi-station photographs of more than 200 fireballs, photographed by the fireball network for 2006–2013, the data on their atmospheric trajectories, coordinates of radiants, velocities, decelerations, orbits in the interplanetary space, light curves, photometric masses, and densities, as well as on the nature of origin of meteoroids which produced the fireballs are obtained; membership of the fireballs to the known fireball/meteor showers is determined. A brightness of the majority of fireballs is within the maximum absolute magnitude range from −5 to −8. It is shown that 62% of fireball-producing meteoroids have a cometary origin and the remaining 38% are of an asteroidal nature. The greater part of the photographed fireballs belongs to the known meteor/fireball showers, while the lesser part (almost 30%) relates to the sporadic background. The obtained results will noticeably replenish the world database with new information on fireballs and are required for solving contemporary astronomy problems associated with studying meteoroid environment in the near-Earth space and the asteroidal-cometary hazard as well as for discovering genetic links between small bodies of the Solar System.

Can there be additional rocky planets in the Habitable Zone of tight binary stars with a known gas giant?

Locating planets in HabitableZones (HZs) around other stars is a growing field in contemporary astronomy. Since a large percentage of all G-M stars in the solar neighbourhood are expected to be part of binary or multiple stellar systems, investigations of whether habitable planets are likely to be discovered in such environments are of prime interest to the scientific community. As current exoplanet statistics predicts that the chances are higher to find new worlds in systems that are already known to have planets, we examine four known extrasolar planetary systems in tight binaries in order to determine their capacity to host additional habitable terrestrial planets. Those systems are Gliese 86, gamma Cephei, HD 41004 and HD 196885. In the case of gamma Cephei, our results suggest that only the M dwarf companion could host additional potentially habitable worlds. Neither could we identify stable, potentially habitable regions around HD 196885 A. HD 196885 B can be considered a slightly more promising target in the search for Earth-twins. Gliese 86 A turned out to be a very good candidate, assuming that the systems history has not been excessively violent. For HD 41004, we have identified admissible stable orbits for habitable planets, but those strongly depend on the parameters of the system. A more detailed investigation shows that for some initial conditions stable planetary motion is possible in the HZ of HD 41004 A. In spite of the massive companion HD 41004 Bb, we found that HD 41004 B, too, could host additional habitable worlds.

Filósofos naturais do demônio: astronomia, alteridade e missionação no sul da Índia, século XVII

The long process of “invention of Hinduism” to early-modern European audiences (which was to be completed only in the eighteenth-century British Orientalist movement) was informed, from the start, by travel narratives, historical chronicles of the exploits of Western nations in several parts of India, and, evidently, by missionary literature in various genres (letters, relations, grammars, treatises, maps etc.). Seventeenth century sources of these kinds abound in expositions of customs, rituals, “mythologies” and denunciations of idolatry (especially when it comes to missionaries’ writings), and they even give some useful information on local natural-historical knowledge, but they are scant in representing local cosmological traditions. In this regard, the Jesuit Jacome Fenicio’s treatise Livro da Seita dos Indios Orientais , written in the first decade of the century (but only published, partly, in the 1930s, although having circulated in manuscript quite widely until the eighteenth century), is a notable exception. The book already starts with the presentation of cosmological conceptions of Malabari Brahmins (whom the author calls “the natural philosophers and theologians” of those parts), and proceeds to their refutation on the basis of contemporary European astronomy, which is taken as self-evidently correct. Natural knowledge is thus clearly identified as a key cultural trait and, concomitantly, as a cultural weapon to be deployed in the representation of the other, which is the main function of the book. Here we examine the details of Fenicio’s exposition and the place he accords to European and Indian cosmologies in wider Jesuit policies and ways of proceeding, reflecting also on the uses of science to reinforce cultural and religious identities and divides in early-modern contact zones. Keywords: Astronomy (17th century), Society of Jesus, Portuguese Estado da India.

The multi-frequency multi-temporal sky

Contemporary astronomy benefits of very large and rapidly growing amounts of data in all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, from long-wavelength radio waves to high energy gamma-rays. Astronomers normally specialize in data taken in one particular energy window, however the advent of data centers world-wide and of the Virtual Observatory, which provide simple and open access to quality data in all energy bands taken at different epochs, is making multi-frequency and multi-epoch astronomy much more affordable than in the past. New tools designed to combine and analyze these data sets are being developed with the aim of visualizing observational results and extracting information about the physical processes powering cosmic sources in ways that were not possible before. In this contribution blazars, a type of cosmic sources that emit highly variable radiation at all frequencies, are used as an example to describe the possibilities of this type of astronomy today, and the discovery potential for the near future.

Australian sites of astronomical heritage

AbstractThe heritage of astronomy in Australia has proven an effective communication medium. By interpreting science as a social and cultural phenomenon new light is thrown on challenges, such as the dispersal of instruments and problems identifying contemporary astronomy heritage. Astronomers are asked to take note and to consider the communication of astronomy now and in the future through a tangible heritage legacy.

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Structural Investigation of Galaxies via Model Analysis

We present single-S\'ersic two-dimensional model fits to 167,600 galaxies modelled independently in the ugrizYJHK bandpasses using reprocessed Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release Seven (SDSS DR7) and UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey Large Area Survey (UKIDSS-LAS) imaging data available from the GAMA database. In order to facilitate this study we developed SIGMA, an R wrapper around several contemporary astronomy software packages including Source Extractor, PSF Extractor and GALFIT 3. SIGMA produces realistic 2D model fits to galaxies, employing automatic adaptive background subtraction and empirical PSF measurements on the fly for each galaxy in GAMA. Using these results, we define a common coverage area across the three GAMA regions containing 138,269 galaxies. We provide S\'ersic magnitudes truncated at 10 re which show good agreement with SDSS Petrosian and GAMA photometry for low S\'ersic index systems (n < 4), and much improved photometry for high S\'ersic index systems (n > 4), recovering as much as \Delta m = 0.5 magnitudes in the r band. We employ a K band S\'ersic index/u - r colour relation to delineate the massive (n > ~2) early-type galaxies (ETGs) from the late-type galaxies (LTGs). The mean S\'ersic index of these ETGs shows a smooth variation with wavelength, increasing by 30% from g through K. LTGs exhibit a more extreme change in S\'ersic index, increasing by 52% across the same range. In addition, ETGs and LTGs exhibit a 38% and 25% decrease respectively in half-light radius from g through K. These trends are shown to arise due to the effects of dust attenuation and stellar population/metallicity gradients within galaxy populations.

Optical Spectroscopy with the Technology of Virtual Observatory

Abstract The contemporary astronomy is flooded with an exponentially growing petabyte-scaled data volumes produced by powerful ground and space-based instrumentation as well as a product of extensive computer simulations and computations of complex numerical models. The efficient organization and seamless handling of this information avalanche stored in a world-wide spread heterogeneous databases and the facilitation of extraction of new physical knowledge about the Universe is a primary goal of the rapidly evolving astronomical Virtual Observatory (VO). We give an overview of current spectroscopic capabilities of VO and identify the future requirements indispensable for detailed multi-wavelength analysis of huge amounts of spectra in a semi-automatic manner.

The Modern U.S. High School Astronomy Course, Its Status and Makeup II: Additional Results

A postal survey of high school astronomy teachers strongly confirms many results of an earlier electronic survey. Additional and new results include a measure of the level of inquiry (more structured inquiry and teacher-led) in the classroom as well as data showing that more emphasis is given to traditional topics than to contemporary astronomy research. The majority of students taking astronomy are college-bound, which offers support for the idea that astronomy might be considered as meeting college admissions requirements, even though it is not a laboratory or “core” science course. More usage of planetarium software is found than previously suspected, and more definitive usage rates for fixed and portable planetariums are found. By combining the two surveys’ results we obtain an even clearer picture of the current nature of high school astronomy courses.

Dagelet and Dawes: Their Meeting, Their Instruments and the First Scientific Experiments on Australian Soil

At Botany Bay on 2 February 1788, the Lap�rouse expedition's astronomer, Joseph Lepaute Dagelet, met his First Fleet counterpart, William Dawes. Dagelet sent Dawes a three-page letter containing the geographic co-ordinates of his observatory, advice on various aspects of the observatory that Dawes was building at Sydney Cove, a discussion of the main issues of contemporary astronomy and information on his own research. By drawing on the evidence of Dagelet's letter and other surviving documents, instrument inventories, fragments of instruments recovered from the Vanikoro shipwreck sites, private and official correspondence by members of the expedition and others, and importantly a short professional biography of Lepaute Dagelet written in 1803 by his mentor J�r�me Lalande, the scientific experiments made by Dagelet at Botany Bay are identified. Dawes' gravity experiments are also identified.

What to teach? What is learned? Astronomy as an amalgam of new and old

The tension between contemporary astronomy and traditional topics as subjects for general astronomy courses or fundamental science courses is healthy, but one must worry if either type crowds out the other. Too often only topics understood hundreds of thousands of years ago (such as gravity, tides, phases, and seasons) take up such a large fraction of the astronomy content that few or none of the fascinating and important discoveries of recent centuries not to mention recent years or months are included. I discuss aspects of this problem. Including topics of contemporary interest often motivates students to concentrate their attention and study time on the entire range of topics in the course. Practitioners of the new field of Astronomy Education Research seem often to attack their subject in perpendicular fashion to the methods of practitioners of communicating astronomy to the public. I also discuss some of the content of our International Astronomical Union's Commission on Education and Development's special session from 2003 on Effective Teaching and Learning of Astronomy , and of the forthcoming volume of the same title to be published by Cambridge University Press. I further discuss the role of inspiring events, such as George Ellery Hale's inspiration from the 1882 transit of Venus and the potential from the widespread observation of the 2004 transit of Venus and of solar eclipses.