MSV-2035 Astronomy Document - Inside Design - FINAL - FINAL

Astronomy & Astrophysics 11 1 INTRODUCTION Astronomy is all about the study of the Universe. As a basic science, astronomy has links to other branches such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science, materials science and biology. Primarily driven by observations, it benefits from and also drives technological advances. Multi-wavelength and multi-messenger astronomy in the recent times have been able to provide unprecedented information about the evolution of the Universe. Theoretical studies confronted by observational data lead to an improved understanding, which in turn is used to refine theoretical models of various processes and phenomena. The combination of the observational and theoretical efforts in the field of astronomy and astrophysics has also led to the development of many allied branches like nuclear astrophysics, astro-chemistry, astro-biology, etc. The advancement in technology leading to high precision data has, in addition to improving our understanding of the Universe, also thrown up several newquestions and challenges. Astronomy &Astrophysics research in India covers a wide range of topics from understanding various details of the nearest star, our Sun, to the origin and evolution of the Universe. Significant contributions have been made by Indian astronomers in theoretical studies of black holes, gravitational waves, the cosmic microwave background and the large scale structure of the Universe. The latter half of the last century saw the establishment of new observatories and development of facilities in optical, near-IR and radio regions. The utilisation of these facilities, as well as data from international facilities, has enabled significant research in the areas of exoplanets, stellar abundances, star formation in the Milky Way and other galaxies, star clusters, pulsars and compact objects, active galactic nuclei, structure and evolution of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, activity in stars and galaxies and transients such as novae, supernovae, gamma-ray burst sources and gravitational wave sources. Decadal Vision Documents are very important for a community to identify thrust areas and define priorities to make progress in science in a focused manner. Different international communities periodically engage in such exercises. In 1 the year 2004, the IndianAcademy of Sciences brought out aVision Document for IndianAstronomy&Astrophysics . It is indeed very gratifying to see several important recommendations mentioned there (like detection of gravitational waves and making multi-wavelength astronomy a niche area) are well achieved and the various, then proposed, facilities (such as AstroSat, a 4-m class optical telescope, enhancing the wide band capabilities of GMRT and participating in large international telescope projects) are now a reality. This document provides the Science Vision for Astronomy & Astrophysics over the next decade and a half where Indian astronomers are expected to be part of most of the large international facilities. Providing a pedagogical overview of the ongoing research from the largest to the smallest scales probed, Section 2 summarises the important questions that Indian researchers wish to answer over this period. Section 3 focuses on the status of efforts globally to answer these questions. This section also summarises various observing facilities and surveys that have played a major role in the past decade. Various large facilities under construction and proposed by the international community for the next decade are also listed.Abrief reviewof the status of R&D in our country is provided in Section 4, including science highlights during the past few decades and details of various existing astronomy facilities. Section 5 lists the details of international mega-science projects in which India is already a partner, international mega science projects with Indian contribution and national projects (both ground and space based) that are in various stages of planning. 1 https://www.ias.ac.in/public/Resources/Other Publications/Overview/astrophys.pdf MEGA SCIENCE VISION-2035