Astroinformatics and Big Data in Astronomy

Dear Colleagues,

The explosive growth of astronomical data generated by modern sky surveys, advanced telescopes, and large-scale simulations has propelled astronomy into the era of big data. Effectively managing, processing, and extracting actionable scientific insights from these massive, complex datasets stands as one of the most critical and transformative challenges in contemporary astrophysics. Astroinformatics—an emerging interdisciplinary field at the nexus of astronomy, computer science, and data science—plays an indispensable role in addressing this challenge by developing innovative methodologies, computational frameworks, and analytical tools tailored to the unique demands of astronomical research.

This Special Issue, titled “Astroinformatics and Big Data in Astronomy,” seeks to showcase cutting-edge research that bridges data science and astronomy. We warmly encourage submissions leveraging state-of-the-art techniques in machine learning, deep learning, artificial intelligence (AI), statistical inference, data mining, interactive data visualization, and high-performance computing to tackle pressing problems across all subfields of astronomy. Relevant topics include (but are not limited to):

• Automated end-to-end data processing pipelines;
• Intelligent celestial object classification and novel discovery systems;
• Scalable data storage, management, and analytics architectures;
• Simulation-based inference and surrogate modeling;
• Virtual observatories and integrated data access platforms;
• Interpretable AI/ML for astronomical insight and hypothesis generation;
• Statistical and computational methods for handling noise, uncertainty, and incompleteness in astronomical data.

We invite astronomers, data scientists, computer scientists, and researchers from related disciplines to contribute original research articles and comprehensive review papers that demonstrate how astroinformatics and big data technologies are accelerating scientific discoveries, revolutionizing research paradigms, and shaping the future of astronomy.

Prof. Dr. Haijun Tian
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Universe is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.