1112.2772 (Petr Škoda)
Petr Škoda
The stellar astronomy has always been considered the fundamental source of
knowledge about the basic building blocks of the universe - the stars. It has
proved correctness of many physical theories - like e.g. the idea of nuclear
fusion in stellar cores, the exchange of mass in interacting binaries or models
of stellar evolution towards white dwarfs or neutron stars. Despite its well
acknowledged importance it seems to be loosing its interestingness for
students, for telescope allocation committees at large observatories, as well
as for granting agencies. In the domain of big telescopes it has been gradually
overtaken by the extra-galactic research and cosmology, surviving however at
smaller observatories and among most advanced amateur astronomers.
We try to analyse the main obstacles lowering the efficiency of research in
contemporary stellar astronomy. We will shortly tackle several problems induced
by paradigmatic changes in handling the extraordinary amount of data provided
by current instruments as well as by introduction of economical criteria and
factory-like management into the modern astronomy.
Finally we speculate the reasons of a marginal role of Virtual observatory in
contemporary stellar research and give some ideas of possible improvements.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.2772
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