The Scientific Quest for High Angular Resolution
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American Astronomical Society winter meeting
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The NRAO and the ngVLA Project convened a Special Session entitled "The Scientific Quest for High Angular Resolution" on 7 January 2020 at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) winter meeting.
Sensitive ground- and space-based astronomical observations acquired at high angular resolution are enabling new insights across many frontier fields of astrophysics, such as star and planet formation. At the dawn of multi-messenger astrophysics, radio-wavelength follow-up at high angular resolution of gravitational wave sources is providing critical insights into the energetics and evolution of these events. Improvements in observations at high angular resolution are also enabling deep proper-motion measurements and surveys, vastly increasing the cosmic volume across which scientists can meaningfully observe protoplanetary disk formation, black hole feeding, jet launching, Local Group dynamics, and much more. These observational insights are propagating into a much improved theoretical understanding of the physics driving each of these frontier fields.
This Special Session:
- Highlighted recent scientific breakthroughs enabled by imaging at high angular resolution;
- Described planned near- and long-term resolution improvements for ground- and space-based facilities;
- Discussed major scientific leaps likely to result from even higher angular resolution across the electromagnetic spectrum; and
- Reviewed the importance of high angular resolution to the high-priority science themes of the great observatories to be commissioned in the next decade.
This Special Session featured a session of invited oral presentations and an associated poster session with contributed presentations. The Special Session's science program appears below.
Presentations can be downloaded by clicking on the presentation titles.
