Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980s

Astronomy is in a golden age. Discoveries since 1960 include quasars (1963), the cosmic microwave background radiation (1965), pulsars (1967), neutronstar binaries (1970), superluminal expansion of radio sources (1971), solar coronal holes (1973), evidence for gravitational radiation from a binary pulsar (1974), anomalous solar neutrino flux (1976), a super gamma‐ray burst (1979), and a gravitational lens (1979). Radio, infrared, ultraviolet, x‐ray, and gamma‐ray techniques have made it possible to study phenomena not accessible to optical astronomy alone. Physics has come to play an increasingly important role in providing both the technology for these developments and the theoretical framework for astronomy. Today, atomic, molecular, nuclear, and plasma physics are indispensable tools in interpreting astronomical data; cosmology and the study of superdense configurations depend on general relativity and, increasingly, elementary‐particle physics.

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