We review Big Data in Astronomy and its role in Astronomy Education. At present all-sky and large-area astronomical surveys and their catalogued data span over the whole range of electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma-ray to radio, as well as most important surveys giving optical images, proper motions, variability and spectroscopic data. Most important astronomical databases and archives are presented as well. They are powerful sources for many-sided efficient research using the Virtual Observatory (VO) environment. It is shown that using and analysis of Big Data accumulated in astronomy lead to many new discoveries. Using these data gives a significant advantage for Astronomy Education due to its attractiveness and due to big interest of young generation to computer science and technologies. The Computer Science itself benefits from data coming from the Universe and a new interdisciplinary science Astroinformatics has been created to manage these data.

Radio continuum emission from galaxies is powered by a combination of distinct physical processes, each providing unique diagnostic information. Over frequencies spanning ∼ 1–120 GHz, radio spectra of star-forming galaxies are primarily comprised of: (1) non-thermal synchrotron emission powered by accelerated cosmic-ray electrons/positrons; (2) free-free emission from young massive star-forming (H ii) regions; (3) anomalous microwave emission, which is a dominant, but completely unconstrained, foreground in cosmic microwave background experiments; and (4) cold, thermal dust emission that accounts for most of the dust and total mass content in the interstellar medium in galaxies. In this proceeding, we discuss these key energetic processes that contribute to the radio emission from star-forming galaxies, with an emphasis on frequencies ≳30 GHz, where current investigations of star formation within nearby galaxies show that the free-free emission begins to dominate over non-thermal synchrotron emission. We also discuss how planned radio facilities that will access these frequencies, such as a next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA), will be transformative to our understanding of the star formation process in galaxies.

I will present results from our on-going large area survey of high-redshift quasars, which has discovered more than 20 new quasars at z > 6.5, at the epoch of reionization, forming the first large statistical sample of EoR quasars. I will discuss the rapid evolution of quasar density at that epoch, which suggests that we are witnessing the emergence of the first supermassive black hole population. I will also present multiwavelength followup observation results, especially from ALMA and Chandra, which reveals a diverse environment of quasar activities and yields new insights into the supermassive black hole/massive galaxy co-evolution.

The Pioneer Venus and Venus Express missions, and the Mars Express and MAVEN missions, along with numerous Earth orbiters carrying space physics and aeronomy instruments, have utilized the increasing availability of space weather observations to provide better insight into the impacts of present-day solar activity on the atmospheres of terrestrial planets. Of most interest among these are the responses leading to escape of either ion or neutral constituents, potentially altering both the total atmospheric reservoirs and their composition. While debates continue regarding the role(s) of a planetary magnetic field in either decreasing or increasing these escape rates, observations have shown that enhancements can occur in both situations in response to solar activity-related changes. These generally involve increased energy inputs to the upper atmospheres, increases in ion production, and/or increases in escape channels, e.g. via interplanetary field penetration or planetary field ‘opening’. Problems arise when extrapolations of former loss rates are needed. While it is probably safe to suggest lower limits based simply on planet age multiplied by currently measured ion and neutral escape rates, the evolution of the Sun, including its activity, must be folded into these estimations. Poor knowledge of the history of solar activity, especially in terms of coronal mass ejections and solar wind properties, greatly compounds the uncertainties in related planetary atmosphere evolution calculations. Prospects for constraining their influences will depend on our ability to do a better job of solar activity history reconstruction.

Currently, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) searches for Earth-size planets around nearby dwarf stars. To identify specific weak variations in the light curves of stars, sophisticated data processing methods and analysis of the light curve shapes should be developed and applied. We report some preliminary results of our project to find and identify minima in the light curves of stars collected by TESS and stored in the MAST (Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes) database. We developed Python code to process the short-cadence (2-min) TESS PDCSAP (Pre-search Data Conditioning Simple Aperture Photometry) light curves. Our code allows us to create test samples to apply machine learning methods to classify minima in the light curves taking into account their morphological signatures. Our approach will be used to find and analyze some sporadic events in the observed light curves originating from transits of comet-like bodies.

We tested how the AGN contribution (5%–75% of the total flux) may affect different morphological parameters commonly used in galaxy classification. We carried out all analysis at z ∼ 0 and at higher redshifts that correspond to the COSMOS field. Using a local training sample of >2000 visually classified galaxies, we carried out all measurements with and without the central source, and quantified how the contribution of a bright nuclear point source could affect different morphological parameters, such as: Abraham and Concelice-Bershady indices, Gini, Asymmetry, M20 moment of light, and Smoothness. We found that concentration indexes are less sensitive to both redshift and brightness in comparison to the other parameters. We also found that all parameters change significantly with AGN contribution. At z ∼ 0, up to a 10% of AGN contribution the morphological classification will not be significantly affect, but for ⩾ 25% of AGN contribution late-type spirals follow the range of parameters of elliptical galaxies and can therefore be misclassified early types.

Stars and their exoplanets evolve together. Depending on the physical characteristics of these systems, such as age, orbital distance and activity of the host stars, certain types of star-exoplanet interactions can dominate during given phases of the evolution. Identifying observable signatures of such interactions can provide additional avenues for characterising exoplanetary systems. Here, I review some recent works on star-planet interactions and discuss their observability at different wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Studying the transformation of cluster galaxies contributes a lot to have a clear picture of evolution of the universe. Towards that we are studying different properties (morphology, star formation, AGN contribution and metallicity) of galaxies in clusters up to z ∼ 1.0 taking three different clusters: ZwCl0024 + 1652 at z ∼ 0.4, RXJ1257 + 4738 at z ∼ 0.9 and Virgo at z ∼ 0.0038. For ZwCl0024 + 1652 and RXJ1257 + 4738 clusters we used tunable filters data from GLACE survey taken with GTC 10.4 m telescope and other public data, while for Virgo we used public data. We did the morphological classification of 180 galaxies in ZwCl0024 + 1652 using galSVM, where 54 % and 46 % of galaxies were classified as early-type (ET) and late-type (LT) respectively. We did a comparison between the three clusters within the clustercentric distance of 1 Mpc and found that ET proportion (decreasing with redshift) dominates over the LT (increasing with redshift) throughout. We finalized the data reduction for ZwCl0024 + 1652 cluster and identified 46 [OIII] and 73 Hβ emission lines. For this cluster we have classified 22 emission line galaxies (ELGs) using BPT-NII diagnostic diagram resulting with 14 composite, 1 AGN and 7 star forming (SF) galaxies. We are using these results, together with the public data, for further analysis of the variations of properties in relation to redshift within z < 1.0.

New challenges in the modelling of galaxy spectra are bound to emerge as upcoming telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope will allow us to detect galaxies at fainter flux levels and higher redshifts than ever before. Here, we highlight three modelling problems that may become relevant for upcoming observations in the rest-frame ultraviolet/optical at the high-redshift frontier: stellar initial mass function sampling effects, Population III signatures and the leakage of ionizing radiation into the intergalactic medium.

Circumstellar dust analogues can be studied experimentally to determine their collisional behavior and their optical properties. These results affect simulations of circumstellar disks in various, substantial ways: Collision results determine how dust aggregates grow and how their aerodynamic properties change with time. This determines how solids move throughout the disk, how they accumulate, and how planetesimals might be formed. The optical properties determine the observational signature of these effects and allow us to constrain the spatial distribution of dust in disks, the sizes of the aggregates, as well as the temperature and optical depth of the dust emission. In this contribution, it is discussed how theoretical models and their predictions depend on laboratory results and what we learned about disks from high spatial resolution radio interferometry.

We present a sample of nearly 650 widely separated double white dwarf binaries found using Gaia DR2 astrometry. We derive preliminary total ages for each white dwarf in our sample using Gaia photometry and compare the total ages of both components of each binary in our sample. We find agreement within 3 sigma between the two ages ∼85% of the time with median age uncertainties of ∼3.5 Gyr depending on which initial-final mass relation is used. When a subsample with the most precise ages is used, the agreement within 3 sigma drops to ∼70% with median age uncertainties of 300-600 Myr.

We present the latest data release of the Planetary Nebulae Spectrograph Survey (PNS) of ten lenticular galaxies and two spiral galaxies. With this data set we are able to recover the galaxies’ kinematics out to several effective radii. We use a maximum likelihood method to decompose the disk and spheroid kinematics and we compare it with the kinematics of spiral and elliptical galaxies. We build the Tully- Fisher (TF) relation for these galaxies and we compare with data from the literature and simulations. We find that the disks of lenticular galaxies are hotter than the disks of spiral galaxies at low redshifts, but still dominated by rotation velocity. The mechanism responsible for the formation of these lenticular galaxies is neither major mergers, nor a gentle quenching driven by stripping or Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) feedback.

Luminous quasars are powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes. Such luminous quasars have been discovered up to the highest redshifts, z > 7. Here we discuss recent observations of the host galaxies of luminous quasars at z ≳ 6. We do not find a correlation between ongoing black hole growth and star-formation rate in the high redshift quasars, possibly indicating that black holes and their hosts do not co-evolve. We further show that even with high spatial resolution observations of the gas kinematics, dynamical mass estimates remain highly uncertain and should be used with caution.

The Universe is full of galaxies of various shapes; some galaxies have spiral arms and others don’t. Why do galaxies show such diversity? How were galaxies formed and evolved? Galaxies are thought to grow by interacting and merging with other galaxies, and the galaxy mergers may be the key process creating the variety. GALAXY CRUISE is the first citizen science project conducted by National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) to unlock galaxies’ secrets using the big observational data. We made the superior quality big data taken by the Subaru Telescope accessible to the public and invited them to participate in data classification. Here we report how we designed the website and its first-year progress.

The European Exoplanets-A project aims to provide a comprehensive view of the nature of exoplanet atmospheres, through an interdisciplinary approach.

Exoplanets-A includes a knowledge server where we provide the scientific results and educational resources gathered and developed during the project. In this proceedings, we present two such educational resources: a MOOC and an augmented reality application.

The estimation of interstellar dust masses is an important pursuit in our understanding of both local and early Universe – see e.g. the “dust budget crisis”. One of the most used methods of estimating dust masses – dust emission fitting – requires an estimate of the dust opacity at far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths, but in most models this quantity is based on extrapolation rather than on actual measurements. It is becoming more and more evident that the opacity in typical dust models differs from that of dust analogs measured in the lab, meaning that astronomical dust mass estimations may need to be revised. To estimate the systematic errors introduced by this mismatch, we calculated dust emission for a model where dust far-infrared opacity is the same as that measured in lab samples, then we fit the synthetic emission with a typical (modified blackbody) dust model. Our results show that, if interstellar dust is indeed similar to the lab dust analogs, most fits may overestimate dust masses by as much as an order of magnitude.

Hot Jupiters have extended gaseous (ionospheric) envelopes, which extend far beyond the Roche lobe. The envelopes are loosely bound to the planet and, therefore, are strongly influenced by fluctuations of the stellar wind. We show that, since hot Jupiters are close to the parent stars, magnetic field of the stellar wind is an important factor defining the structure of their magnetospheres. For a typical hot Jupiter, velocity of the stellar wind plasma flow around the atmosphere is close to the Alfvén velocity. As a result stellar wind fluctuations, such as coronal mass ejections, can affect the conditions for the formation of a bow shock around a hot Jupiter. This effect can affect observational manifestations of hot Jupiters.

VLT instruments and ALMA with their high spatial resolution have revolutionized in the past five years our view and understanding of how disks turn into planetary systems. This talk will briefly outline our current understanding of the physical processes occurring and chemical composition evolving as these disks turn into debris disks and eventually planetary systems like our own solar system. I will especially focus on the synergy between disk structure/evolution modeling and astrochemical laboratory/theoretical work to highlight the most recent advances, and open questions such as (1) how much of the chemical composition in disks is inherited from molecular clouds, (2) the relevance of snowlines for planet formation, and (3) what is the origin of the gas in debris disks and what can we learn from it. For each of the three, I will outline briefly how the combination of theory/lab astrochemistry, astrophysical models and observations are required to advance our understanding.