A Science Vision For European Astronomy

European astronomy has now regained full worldwide competitiveness, being at the forefront in many domains. To strengthen this position and to extend it to all astronomical domains and across Europe, a group of European funding agencies set up the ASTRONET programme, supported by the European Commission, with the goal of establish a comprehensive long-term plan for the development of European astronomy. The first stepping stone is the Science Vision for European Astronomy presented in this book. The Vision analyses the key scientific questions that future research should address and the observing capabilities that are needed to achieve these goals in the next years.