This book presents a collection of focused review papers on the advances in topics in modern astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and planetary science. The chapters are written by expert members of an EU-funded ERASMUS+ program of strategic partnership between several European institutes.
The 13 reviews comprise the topics:
• Space debris, optical measurements
• Meteors, light from comets and asteroids
• Extrasolar enigmas: from disintegrating exoplanets to exo-asteroids
• Physical conditions and chemical abundances in photoionized nebulae from optical spectra
• Observational Constraints on the Common Envelope Phase
• A modern guide to quantitative spectroscopy of massive OB stars
• Explosion mechanisms of core-collapse supernovae and their observational signatures
• Low-mass and substellar eclipsing binaries in stellar clusters
• Globular cluster systems and Galaxy Formation
• Hot atmospheres of galaxies, groups, and clusters of galaxies
• The establishment of the Standard Cosmological Model through observations
• Exploiting solar visible-range observations by inversion techniques: from flows in the solar subsurface to a flaring atmosphere
• Starburst galaxies
The book is intended for the general astronomical community as well as for advanced students who could use it as a guideline, inspiration and overview for their future careers in astronomy.