The International Symposium Astronomical Surveys and Big Data 2 (ASBD-2) started on Monday, September 14, and it will continue till 18 September.

This is the 2nd such meeting organized by the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory (BAO), the 1st one being held in 2015 with participation of astronomers and computer scientists, BAO reported.

During the meeting large astronomical surveys will be reviewed and discussed, a tribute will be given to Markarian and other important surveys, the future of astronomical research by joint efforts of astronomers and computer scientists will be discussed and so on.

Topics of the Symposium are the following:

• Historical surveys; Byurakan surveys for active galaxies (Markarian, Arakelian, Kazarian) and others
• Surveys for exoplanets
• Surveys for stars and nebulae
• Extragalactic and cosmological surveys
• Digitization of astronomical data
• Astronomical Catalogues, Archives and Databases
• Cross-identifications between surveys and discovery of new objects
• Future large-area surveys
• Big Data in Astronomy
• Data Science
• Computational Astrophysics, Astrostatistics and Astroinformatics
• Virtual Observatories

Among the invited speakers of the symposium are AregMickaelian (director of BAO), Oleg Malkov (Russia), co-founder of Astroinformatics Ashish Mahabal (USA), Chair of International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) Chenzhou Cui (China), Alain Sarkissian(France) and others.