Astro2010 White Papers

NOAO endorses and supports the Astro2010 Decadal Survey process, and the NOAO staff have provided community input (in some cases with their colleagues at other institutions) through the following white papers.

Science

1. Dark Energy from Space-based Platform (Lauer)
2. Science Frontiers in Galaxy Evolution: Deep-Wide Surveys (Dickinson, Lotz, Norman)
3. Galaxy Evolution Studies with Deep, Wide-Field, Near-Infrared Surveys (Dickinson)
4. The Growth of Supermassive Black Holes Across Cosmic Time (Dickinson)
5. The Formation and Evolution of the Cold Gas Component and the Baryonic Mass Build-up History in Galaxies (Dickinson, Pope)
6. The Quest for a Physical Understanding of Galaxies Across the Cosmic Time (Dickinson)
7. Deciphering Galaxy Formation with Resolved Stellar Populations (Cunha, Dey, Olsen, V. Smith)
8. The Chemical Evolution of the Galactic Bulge (Cunha, V. Smith)
9. Lifting the Cosmic Veil on the Co-evolution of Black Holes and Galaxies: The Role of Far-Infrared Spectroscopy from Space (Pope)
10. Understanding the Astrophysics of Galaxy Evolution: the role of spectroscopic surveys in the next decade (Dey)
11. Science at Very High Resolution: The Expected and the Unexpected (Ridgway)
12. New Frontiers in Binary Stars: Science at High Angular Resolution (Ridgway)
13. Quantifying Stellar Mass Loss with High Angular Resolution Imaging (Ridgway, Howell)
14. Fundamental Stellar Astrophysics Revealed at Very High Angular Resolution (Ridgway)
15. Exoplanet Characterization and the Search for Life (Ridgway)
16. The Galactic Center: A Laboratory for Fundamental Astrophysics and Galactic Nuclei (Salim)
17. Measuring Stellar Ages and the History of the Milky Way (Saha)
18. Star Formation Histories of Disk and E/S0 Galaxies from Resolved Stars (Olsen)
19. Structure and Substructure of Galactic Spheroids (Olsen)
20. Mapping the Stellar Age Distribution of the Milky Way (Olsen, Saha)
21. Million Degree Plasmas in Extreme Ultraviolet Astronomy (Howell)
22. The Search For Life’s Origins Using High-resolution Mid-ir Spectroscopy At A Giant Groundbased Telescope (Elias, Najita)
23. How and When do Planets Form? The Inner Regions of Planet Forming Disks at High Spatial and Spectral Resolution (Najita)
24. Characterizing Extrasolar Planetary Systems (Najita)
25. Photometric Calibrations for 21st Century Science (Elias, Howell)
26. Type II Supernovae as Probes of Cosmology (Matheson)
27. Type Ia Supernova Science 2010-2020 (Matheson)

State of the Profession

1. GSMT: The Case for Community Access to an Extremely Large Telescope (Elias)
2. Developing Future Generations of Instrument Builders (Elias)
3. Increasing the Number of Underrepresented Minorities in Astronomy at the Undergraduate, Graduate, and Postdoctoral Levels (Paper I) (Norman, Mighell)
4. Increasing the Number of Underrepresented Minorities in Astronomy Through K-12 Education and Public Outreach (Paper II) (Norman, Mighell)
5. Increasing the Number of Underrepresented Minorities in Astronomy: Executive Summary (Norman)
6. NOAO and the Ground-based O/IR System (Silva)
7. Research Science and Education: The NSF’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship (Norman)
8. The Value of the Keck Observatory to NASA and Its Scientific Community (Najita)
9. The Ground-Based O/IR National Observatory: A Roadmap to 2020 (Silva)
10. Operational Funding for Optical and Infrared Interferometers (Ridgway)