Most cited papers in Astronomy and Astrophysical Research
What are the most cited papers in Astronomy and Astrophysical Research?
The most cited paper in Astronomy and Astrophysical Research is "The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS)" (Michael F. Skrutskie et al., 2006), with 12,280 citations. Next come "Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003" (10,695) and "A Universal Density Profile from Hierarchical Clustering" (9,998).
Showing 50 of 98 papers. Every paper with more than 1,882 citations is listed.
| # | Paper | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) Michael F. Skrutskie et al. · The Astronomical Journal | 24 Jan 2006 | 12,280 |
| 2 | Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003 Gustavo A. Bruzual, Stéphane Charlot · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | 22 Sep 2003 | 10,695 |
| 3 | A Universal Density Profile from Hierarchical Clustering Julio F. Navarro, Carlos S. Frenk, Simon D. M. White · The Astrophysical Journal | Dec 1997 | 9,998 |
| 4 | Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function Gilles Chabrier · Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific | Jul 2003 | 9,158 |
| 5 | THE WIDE-FIELD INFRARED SURVEY EXPLORER (WISE): MISSION DESCRIPTION AND INITIAL ON-ORBIT PERFORMANCE EDWARD L. WRIGHT et al. · The Astronomical Journal | 9 Nov 2010 | 8,163 |
| 6 | The Astropy Project: Building an Open-science Project and Status of the v2.0 Core Package * Adrian M. Price-Whelan et al. · The Astronomical Journal | 23 Aug 2018 | 7,690 |
| 7 | STAR FORMATION IN GALAXIES ALONG THE HUBBLE SEQUENCE Robert C. Kennicutt · Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics | Sep 1998 | 6,628 |
| 8 | The NRAO VLA Sky Survey J. J. Condon, W. D. Cotton, E. W. Greisen et al. · The Astronomical Journal | May 1998 | 5,847 |
| 9 | THE SEVENTH DATA RELEASE OF THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY Kevork N. Abazajian et al. · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series | 18 May 2009 | 5,449 |
| 10 | Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars Volker Springel, Simon D. M. White, Adrian R. Jenkins et al. · Nature | Jun 2005 | 5,112 |
| 11 | The Astropy Project : Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package* The Astropy Collaboration et al. · Repository of the Academy's Library (Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) | 2022 | 5,044 |
| 12 | Detection of the Baryon Acoustic Peak in the Large‐Scale Correlation Function of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies Daniel J. Eisenstein et al. · The Astrophysical Journal | 7 Nov 2005 | 4,664 |
| 13 | MODULES FOR EXPERIMENTS IN STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS (MESA) Bill Paxton, Lars Bildsten, Aaron Dotter et al. · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series | 15 Dec 2010 | 4,403 |
| 14 | Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies John Kormendy, Luis C. Ho · Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics | 18 Aug 2013 | 4,233 |
| 15 | Gaia Data Release 3 Antonella Vallenari et al. · Astronomy and Astrophysics | 10 Jun 2022 | 4,157 |
| 16 | Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite George R. Ricker et al. · Journal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and Systems | 24 Oct 2014 | 4,102 |
| 17 | Starburst99: Synthesis Models for Galaxies with Active Star Formation Claus Leitherer, Daniel Schaerer, Jeffrey D. Goldader et al. · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series | Jul 1999 | 4,048 |
| 18 | On the Absorption of X‐Rays in the Interstellar Medium J. Wilms, A. Allen, R. McCray · The Astrophysical Journal | 20 Oct 2000 | 4,027 |
| 19 | Cosmic Star-Formation History Piero Madau, Mark Dickinson · Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics | 26 Jun 2014 | 3,846 |
| 20 | Validation of the new Hipparcos reduction Floor van Leeuwen · Astronomy and Astrophysics | 13 Aug 2007 | 3,846 |
| 21 | Binary Companions of Evolved Stars in APOGEE DR14: Search Method and Catalog of ∼5000 Companions Adrian M. Price-Whelan, David W. Hogg, Hans-Walter Rix et al. · The Astronomical Journal | 18 Jun 2018 | 3,746 |
| 22 | A hierarchical O(N log N) force-calculation algorithm Josh Barnes, Piet Hut · Nature | Dec 1986 | 3,735 |
| 23 | The many lives of active galactic nuclei: cooling flows, black holes and the luminosities and colours of galaxies Darren J. Croton, Volker Springel, Simon D. M. White et al. · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | 24 Nov 2005 | 3,715 |
| 24 | A Relationship between Nuclear Black Hole Mass and Galaxy Velocity Dispersion Karl Gebhardt, Ralf Bender, Gary Bower et al. · The Astrophysical Journal | 10 Aug 2000 | 3,695 |
| 25 | The EAGLE project: simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments Joop Schaye et al. · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | 11 Nov 2014 | 3,678 |
| 26 | LSST: From Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products Željko Ivezić et al. · The Astrophysical Journal | 10 Mar 2019 | 3,523 |
| 27 | Final Results from the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to Measure the Hubble Constant Wendy L. Freedman, Barry F. Madore, Brad K. Gibson et al. · The Astrophysical Journal | 20 May 2001 | 3,330 |
| 28 | A phantom menace? Cosmological consequences of a dark energy component with super-negative equation of state R.R Caldwell · Physics Letters B | Oct 2002 | 3,324 |
| 29 | Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies Gérard de Vaucouleurs, A. de Vaucouleurs, H. G. Corwin et al. | 1991 | 3,275 |
| 30 | MODULES FOR EXPERIMENTS IN STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS (MESA): BINARIES, PULSATIONS, AND EXPLOSIONS Bill Paxton, Pablo Marchant, Josiah Schwab et al. · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series | 21 Sep 2015 | 3,248 |
| 31 | Dark Matter Substructure within Galactic Halos Ben Moore, Sebastiano Ghigna, Fabio Governato et al. · The Astrophysical Journal | 10 Oct 1999 | 3,058 |
| 32 | Embedded Clusters in Molecular Clouds Charles J. Lada, Elizabeth A. Lada · Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics | Sep 2003 | 3,049 |
| 33 | Herschel Space Observatory Goeran L. Pilbratt, J. R. Riedinger, Thomas Passvogel et al. · Astronomy and Astrophysics | Jul 2010 | 3,002 |
| 34 | LUMINOUS INFRARED GALAXIES D. B. Sanders, I. Félix Mirabel · Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics | Sep 1996 | 2,848 |
| 35 | Detailed Structural Decomposition of Galaxy Images Chien Y. Peng, Luis C. Ho, Chris Impey et al. · The Astronomical Journal | Jul 2002 | 2,833 |
| 36 | Large-scale bias and the peak background split Ravi K. Sheth, G. Tormen · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Sep 1999 | 2,828 |
| 37 | Populating a cluster of galaxies - I. Results at \fontshape{it}{z}=0 Volker Springel, Simon D. M. White, Giuseppe Tormen et al. · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Dec 2001 | 2,740 |
| 38 | Theoretical Modeling of Starburst Galaxies L. J. Kewley, M. A. Dopita, R. S. Sutherland et al. · The Astrophysical Journal | 20 Jul 2001 | 2,694 |
| 39 | Binary Companions of Evolved Stars in APOGEE DR14: Search Method and Catalog of ∼5000 Companions Price-Whelan, A., Hogg, D., Rix, H. et al. · MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) | 2018 | 2,685 |
| 40 | A grid of MARCS model atmospheres for late-type stars B. Gustafsson, B. Edvardsson, Kimmo Eriksson et al. · Astronomy and Astrophysics | 29 May 2008 | 2,656 |
| 41 | The Slope of the Black Hole Mass versus Velocity Dispersion Correlation Scott D. Tremaine, Karl Gebhardt, Ralf Bender et al. · The Astrophysical Journal | Aug 2002 | 2,646 |
| 42 | Evolutionary tracks and isochrones for low- and intermediate-mass stars: From 0.15 to 7 $M_{\odot}$, and from $Z=0.0004$ to 0.03 L. Girardi, Alessandro Bressan, G. Bertelli et al. · Astronomy & Astrophysics Supplement Series | Feb 2000 | 2,601 |
| 43 | Discovery of a supernova explosion at half the age of the Universe S. Perlmutter et al. · Nature | 1998 | 2,562 |
| 44 | The Galaxy Evolution Explorer : A Space Ultraviolet Survey Mission D. Christopher Martin et al. · The Astrophysical Journal | 17 Jan 2005 | 2,503 |
| 45 | Breaking the hierarchy of galaxy formation Richard G. Bower, Andrew Benson, Rowena Katherine Malbon et al. · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | 16 Jun 2006 | 2,495 |
| 46 | The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Alistair B Lawrence et al. · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | 23 Jul 2007 | 2,493 |
| 47 | THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH DATA RELEASES OF THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY: FINAL DATA FROM SDSS-III Shadab Alam et al. · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series | 27 Jul 2015 | 2,476 |
| 48 | The Supernova Legacy Survey: measurement of $\Omega_{\mathsf{M}}$, $\Omega_\mathsf{\Lambda}$ and w from the first year data set P. Astier et al. · Astronomy and Astrophysics | 27 Jan 2006 | 2,459 |
| 49 | Stellar masses and star formation histories for 10 5 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Guinevere Kauffmann et al. · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | May 2003 | 2,452 |
| 50 | Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Early Data Release Chris Stoughton et al. · The Astronomical Journal | 2002 | 2,423 |
Citations are OpenAlex's own counts, from its 2026-09-23 snapshot, so the ranking can differ from Google Scholar or Web of Science. A paper is listed for a field when OpenAlex files it under one of the field's topics; retracted papers and papers whose citation count cannot be traced to citing works are left out, and a preprint and the article it became are shown once. Release dates are OpenAlex's: where a source gave only a month or a year, that is what is shown. How the lists are chosen.