Contact

Astrophysics Authority maintains a dedicated channel for readers, researchers, students, and educators who want to connect with the editorial process — whether to flag an error in the published reference content, propose a topic for coverage, or ask a question about navigating the site's resources. This page explains how to reach the editorial office, what geographic scope the site serves, and how to structure a message so it gets a useful response without unnecessary back-and-forth.

Additional contact options

Beyond a direct message to the editorial inbox, the site supports a small set of structured pathways depending on what a reader actually needs.

For factual questions about astrophysics topics — the kind of thing that belongs in a reference answer rather than an editorial conversation — the Astrophysics Frequently Asked Questions page covers the most common conceptual sticking points, from the mechanics of gravitational waves to what distinguishes a neutron star from a black hole. That page is the faster route for anyone who simply wants a clear, sourced explanation without waiting for a reply.

Researchers or students looking for institutional resources — funding bodies, degree programs, or professional organizations — will find structured breakdowns at Astrophysics Grants and Funding and Astrophysics Research Institutions (US). Those pages are updated on a periodic editorial schedule and reflect named public programs rather than editorial opinion.

For correction submissions specifically — a miscited figure, an outdated instrument specification, a named source that has changed its published position — the editorial process treats those as the highest-priority incoming messages. Corrections that include a direct link to the authoritative source are resolved substantially faster than those that don't.

How to reach this office

The primary editorial contact address is listed in the site footer, which is generated by the publishing template and reflects the current operational inbox. Messages sent there reach the editorial process directly, without routing through an automated triage system.

Response time for standard inquiries runs 3 to 5 business days. Correction submissions with a clearly identified error and a named source are typically acknowledged within 48 hours. Messages that arrive without sufficient context — no subject line, no specific page referenced, no clear question — move to the back of the queue, not out of indifference but out of triage logic: a message that requires three clarifying exchanges before it can be answered occupies the same queue slot as four messages that can be resolved immediately.

There is no telephone contact for this editorial office. That is a deliberate choice. Astrophysics reference content requires precise written language — the difference between a neutron star with a mass of 1.4 solar masses and one at 2.1 solar masses is not a detail that travels well in a phone call. Written correspondence creates a record, allows both parties to cite specific sources, and produces answers that can be checked against the published literature.

Service area covered

Astrophysics Authority is a US-scope reference property. The content is produced and editorially maintained in English, drawing on US-based institutions — NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and referenced journals indexed by the American Astronomical Society — as primary named sources.

The site does not provide region-specific guidance for readers outside the United States in the way that, for example, a legal or healthcare reference property might. Astrophysics as a discipline operates across international collaboration structures — the Event Horizon Telescope project, for instance, linked 8 observatories across 6 continents to produce the first image of a black hole's shadow in 2019 — and the published reference content reflects that global scientific record. But editorial decisions, source prioritization, and institutional coverage are calibrated for a US readership and US educational and funding contexts.

Educators outside the US are welcome to contact the editorial process with questions about content applicability to non-US curricula. Those messages are answered on the same schedule as standard inquiries.

What to include in your message

A well-structured message reaches resolution in a single exchange. A poorly structured one generates a reply asking for the information that should have been in the first message. The difference is usually four specific details.

1. The page URL or title. Not "the article about black holes" — there are 3 distinct black-hole-related pages on this site. The specific page title or slug (visible in the browser address bar) removes all ambiguity.
2. The specific passage, figure, or claim in question. Copy the exact sentence or data point. Do not paraphrase — paraphrasing introduces a second layer of interpretation before the editorial process has even seen the original.
3. The named source that contradicts or supports the content. For corrections, this means a direct link to the authoritative document: a NASA technical report, a referenced paper with a DOI, a named agency publication. For topic proposals, this means identifying what published literature exists to support a full reference page.
4. The nature of the request. A correction, a topic proposal, a sourcing question, and a licensing inquiry are four different workflows. Identifying which one applies at the top of the message routes it to the right editorial process without delay.

Messages that skip step 3 — the named source — are the single most common reason correction requests stall. "I think that number is wrong" is the beginning of a conversation, not a correction. "That number conflicts with the value published in NASA's 2022 Astrophysics Annual Report, available at [nasa.gov]" is a correction. The distinction matters because the editorial process's job is to verify against sources, not to adjudicate between competing assertions.