No Arabic abstract
THESEUS is a medium size space mission of the European Space Agency, currently under evaluation for a possible launch in 2032. Its main objectives are to investigate the early Universe through the observation of gamma-ray bursts and to study the gravitational waves electromagnetic counterparts and neutrino events. On the other hand, its instruments, which include a wide field of view X-ray (0.3-5 keV) telescope based on lobster-eye focusing optics and a gamma-ray spectrometer with imaging capabilities in the 2-150 keV range, are also ideal for carrying out unprecedented studies in time domain astrophysics. In addition, the presence onboard of a 70 cm near infrared telescope will allow simultaneous multi-wavelegth studies. Here we present the THESEUS capabilities for studying the time variability of different classes of sources in parallel to, and without affecting, the gamma-ray bursts hunt.
The large-scale surveys such as PTF, CRTS and Pan-STARRS-1 that have emerged within the past 5 years or so employ digital databases and modern analysis tools to accentuate research into Time Domain Astronomy (TDA). Preparations are underway for LSST which, in another 6 years, will usher in the second decade of modern TDA. By that time the Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard (DASCH) project will have made available to the community the full sky Historical TDA database and digitized images for a century (1890--1990) of coverage. We describe the current DASCH development and some initial results, and outline plans for the production scanning phase and data distribution which is to begin in 2012. That will open a 100-year window into temporal astrophysics, revealing rare transients and (especially) astrophysical phenomena that vary on time-scales of a decade. It will also provide context and archival comparisons for the deeper modern surveys
Celestial objects exhibit a wide range of variability in brightness at different wavebands. Surprisingly, the most common methods for characterizing time series in statistics -- parametric autoregressive modeling -- is rarely used to interpret astronomical light curves. We review standard ARMA, ARIMA and ARFIMA (autoregressive moving average fractionally integrated) models that treat short-memory autocorrelation, long-memory $1/f^alpha$ `red noise, and nonstationary trends. Though designed for evenly spaced time series, moderately irregular cadences can be treated as evenly-spaced time series with missing data. Fitting algorithms are efficient and software implementations are widely available. We apply ARIMA models to light curves of four variable stars, discussing their effectiveness for different temporal characteristics. A variety of extensions to ARIMA are outlined, with emphasis on recently developed continuous-time models like CARMA and CARFIMA designed for irregularly spaced time series. Strengths and weakness of ARIMA-type modeling for astronomical data analysis and astrophysical insights are reviewed.
The joint JAXA/NASA ASTRO-H mission is the sixth in a series of highly successful X-ray missions developed by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), with a planned launch in 2015. The ASTRO-H mission is equipped with a suite of sensitive instruments with the highest energy resolution ever achieved at E > 3 keV and a wide energy range spanning four decades in energy from soft X-rays to gamma-rays. The simultaneous broad band pass, coupled with the high spectral resolution of Delta E < 7 eV of the micro-calorimeter, will enable a wide variety of important science themes to be pursued. ASTRO-H is expected to provide breakthrough results in scientific areas as diverse as the large-scale structure of the Universe and its evolution, the behavior of matter in the gravitational strong field regime, the physical conditions in sites of cosmic-ray acceleration, and the distribution of dark matter in galaxy clusters at different redshifts.
We describe a dynamic science portal called the GROWTH Marshal that allows time-domain astronomers to define science programs, program filters to save sources from different discovery streams, co-ordinate follow-up with various robotic or classical telescopes, analyze the panchromatic follow-up data and generate summary tables for publication. The GROWTH marshal currently serves 137 scientists, 38 science programs and 67 telescopes. Every night, in real-time, several science programs apply various customized filters to the 10^5 nightly alerts from the Zwicky Transient Facility. Here, we describe the schematic and explain the functionality of the various components of this international collaborative platform.
AstroSat is a multi-wavelength astronomy satellite, launched on 2015 September 28. It carries a suite of scientific instruments for multi-wavelength observations of astronomical sources. It is a major Indian effort in space astronomy and the context of AstroSat is examined in a historical perspective. The Performance Verification phase of AstroSat has been completed and all instruments are working flawlessly and as planned. Some brief highlights of the scientific results are also given here.