Although the extra-solar planets discovered so far are of the giant, gaseous type, the increased sensitivity of future surveys will result in the discovery of lower mass planets. The detection of O2 in the atmosphere of a rocky extra-solar planet would be a potential indicator of life. In this paper we address the specific issue of whether we would be able to detect the O2 A-band absorption feature in the atmosphere of a planet similar to the Earth, if it were in orbit around a nearby star. Our method is empirical, in that we use observations of the Earth's O2 A-band, with a simple geometric modification for a transiting extra-solar planet, allowing for limb-darkening of the host star. We simulate the spectrum of the host star with the superposed O2 A-band absorption of the transiting planet, assuming a spectral resolution of ~8 kms−1(typical of current echelle spectrographs), for a range of spectral signal-to-noise ratios. The main result is that in principle we may be able to detect the O2 A-band of the transiting planet for host stars with radii R≤ 0.3R ʘ. However, using existing instrumentation and 8m telescopes, this requires target M-stars with m(V) ≈ 10 or brighter for integration times of ~10 hours or less. The number of such stars over the sky is small. Larger aperture telescopes and/or improved instrumentation efficiency would enable surveys of M-stars down to m(V) ≈ 13 and greatly improve the chances of discovering life elsewhere.

Practical astronomy is usually taught using optical telescopes or, more rarely, radio telescopes. For a similar cost, complementary studies may be made of astrophysical particles through the use of a modestly sized muon detector. Such a detector records the arrival of cosmic ray particles that have traversed the heliosphere and the rate of muon detections reflects the flux of those particles. That flux is controlled by the day to day properties of the heliosphere which is in a state of constant change as the outflowing solar wind is affected by solar activity. As a consequence, a laboratory muon detector, whose count rate depends on the state of the heliosphere, can be an interesting and useful teaching tool that is complementary to optical or radio studies of the Sun.

We first present a recently developed three-dimensional chemodynamic code for galaxy evolution from the Kiev–Kiel collaboration. It follows the evolution of all components of a galaxy, such as dark matter, stars, molecular clouds and diffuse interstellar matter. Dark matter and stars are treated as collisionless N-body systems. The interstellar matter is numerically described by a smoothed particle hydrodynamics approach for the diffuse (hot) gas and a sticky particle scheme for the (cool) molecular clouds. Physical processes, such as star formation, stellar death, or condensation and evaporation processes of clouds interacting with the ISM are described locally. An example application of the model to a star forming dwarf galaxy will be shown for comparison with other codes. Secondly, we will discuss new kinds of exotic chemodynamic processes, as they occur in dense gas–star systems in galactic nuclei, such as non-standard ‘drag’-force interactions, destructive and gas-producing stellar collisions. Their implementation in one-dimensional dynamic models of galactic nuclei is presented. Future prospects to generalise these to three dimensions are in progress and will be discussed.

Orbital-period variations of the neglected W UMa-type binary star, NY Lyr, were analyzed based on two newly determined eclipse times together with the others compiled from the literature. A cyclic oscillation with a period of 82.1 yr and an amplitude of 0.0247 d was discovered to be superimposed on a continuous period increase (dP/dt = +1.33 × 10−7 d yr−1). After the long-term period increase and the large-amplitude cyclic oscillation were removed from the O–C diagram, the residuals suggest that there is another small-amplitude period oscillation (A 4 = 0.0053 d, P 4 = 19.4 years) in the orbital period changes. As in the cases of AH Cnc and AD Cnc, both the continuous period increase and the two cyclic period oscillations make NY Lyr an interesting system to study in the future. In order to understand the evolutionary state of the binary system, new photometric and spectroscopic observations and a careful investigation on those data are needed.

PSR B1259 – 63 is a 47 ms radio pulsar with a high spin-down luminosity which is in a close, highly eccentric 3·5 yr orbit about a bright stellar companion. The binary system may be a detectable source of hard ã γ-rays produced by inverse Compton scattering of photons from the B2e star SS2883 by electrons and positrons in the pulsar wind. The star provides an enormous density of optical photons in the vicinity of the pulsar, particularly at epochs near periastron. We calculate the emission from the unshocked region of the pulsar wind, assuming that it terminates at a shock where it attains pressure balance with the companion’s wind. The spectra and light curves for the inverse Compton emission from the shock-terminated wind are compared with those for an unterminated wind. If the pulsar’s wind is weaker than that from the companion star, the termination of the wind decreases the inverse Compton flux, particularly near periastron. The termination shock geometry has the effect of decreasing the asymmetry of the γ-ray light curve around periastron, which arises because of the asymmetrical variation of the scattering angle.

We have developed a 350 μm radiometer to perform automated site testing in remote regions of Antarctica. In summer 2000–2001 the instrument operated at Concordia, a new station under construction at Dome C on the Antarctic Plateau. We present the results, and compare them with the atmospheric opacity measured at the South Pole in the same five-week period. During these five weeks, observing conditions at Dome C were, on average, substantially better than those at the South Pole.

We plan to digitise the AAO/UKST Hα survey of the Southern sky using the SuperCOSMOS facility at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. The digitisation will be performed at 10 microns resolution (0·67 arcsec), and will result in a database of 275 Gbyte of pixel data for the 200 fields of the survey. These data will be processed to produce also a point source catalogue. As the Hα survey is an official AAO sky survey, both the pixel data and the point source catalogue will be made available to the community as a service facility. We give details of the digitisation process, archiving of the resulting data and the plans for dissemination of the database.

The use of role-playing exercises in the teaching of university astronomy and physics can enliven lectures, deepen student understanding and dramatically increase the level of classroom interaction. A series of case studies is presented, illustrating the nature of this technique, its advantages and some of its pitfalls. Several ready-to-run exercises are included.

Given the growing use of Sérsic's (1963, 1968) R 1/n model for describing the stellar distributions in galaxies, and the lack of any single reference that provides the various associated mathematical expressions, we have endeavoured to compile such a resource here. We present the standard intensity profile, and its various guises such as the luminosity, surface-brightness, and aperture–magnitude profile. Expressions to transform the effective surface brightness into the mean effective and central surface brightness are also given, as is the expression to transform between effective radii and exponential scale-lengths. We additionally provide expressions for deriving the ‘concentration’ of an R 1/n profile, and two useful equations for the logarithmic slope of the light-profile are given. Petrosian radii and fluxes are also derived for a range of Sérsic profiles and compared with the effective radii and total flux. Similarly, expressions to obtain Kron radii and fluxes are presented as a function of the Sérsic index n and the number of effective radii sampled. Illustrative figures are provided throughout. Finally, the core–Sérsic model, consisting of an inner power-law and an outer Sérsic function, is presented.

We present a summary of a recent meeting held in honour of Brent Tully's 60th birthday. We also provide a retrospective on his career to date.

This article describes a method to turn astronomical imaging into a random number generator by using the positions of incident cosmic rays and hot pixels to generate bit streams. We subject the resultant bit streams to a battery of standard benchmark statistical tests for randomness and show that these bit streams are statistically the same as a perfect random bit stream. Strategies for improving and building upon this method are outlined.

Samples of CSS/GPS sources suitable for statistical studies have been selected from the 3CR catalogue and from the Peacock & Wall catalogue. The selection criterion used for the Peacock & Wall catalogue CSS/GPS sources selects sources which peak below about 2 GHz and are therefore larger than ˜200 pc. Our main aim is to find among the flat spectrum sources in the Peacock & Wall catalogue smaller size CSS/GPS sources by means of systematic high resolution observations. The discovery of a few more would be important in order to finally have a complete flux limited sample of this class of objects. We discuss the results obtained so far for three of the observed sources.

X-ray binaries in which the accreting component is a neutron star commonly exhibit significant changes in their spin. In the system Cen X-3, a disk accreting binary system, the pulsar was observed to spin up at a rate ḟ = 8 × 10−13 Hz s−1 when averaged over the past twenty years, but significant fluctuations were observed above this mean. Recent BASTE observations have disclosed that these fluctuations are much larger than previously noted, and appeared to be a system characteristic. The change in the spin state from spin-up to spin-down or vice-versa occurs on a time scale that is much shorter than the instrument can resolve (≤1 d), but appears always to be a similar amplitude, and to occur stochastically. These observations have posed a problem for the conventional torque–mass accretion relation for accreting pulsars, because in this model the spin rate is closely related to the accretion rate, and the latter needs to be finely tuned and to change abruptly to explain the observations. Here we review recent work in this direction and present a coherent picture that explains these observations. We also draw attention to some outstanding problems for future studies.

Propagation effects on radio emission within the pulsar magnetosphere are discussed. Widely accepted pulsar models assume that a pulsar magnetosphere is populated with relativistic pair plasmas produced through electron–positron cascades by accelerated primary particles above the polar cap. Any radio emission produced well inside the light cylinder (the radius at which the rotation speed equals c) must propagate through the magnetospheric plasma and be subject to plasma dispersion effects such as refraction and absorption. The observed pulse profiles should contain some features that reflect the influence of the intervening plasma. I discuss particularly the absorption effect due to cyclotron resonance and its possible observational consequences.

In their study of the evolution of galaxies within clusters, Butcher and Oemler discovered evidence for a strong evolution in star-formation rate with redshift. Later studies confirmed this conclusion and uncovered several aspects of the effect: photometric, spectroscopic, and morphological. This article reviews a broad sample of these works and discusses selection effects, biases, and driving mechanisms that might be responsible for the changes in star-formation rate.

Powerful extragalactic radio sources are characterised by kpc-scale synchrotron emission associated with highly-collimated outflows of relativistic plasma. It is hypothesised that this outflowing plasma is powered by accretion processes concomitant with a central massive black hole. The radio morphologies of these sources comprise jets, lobes and for the most powerful sources, hotspots. At first sight, powerful extragalactic radio sources are a mixed group of objects, with the result that only some gross property delineates them further (e.g. steep-spectrum or flat-spectrum). However, there is accumulating observational evidence which suggests that it is the orientation of the radio axis to our line of sight that dictates their observed characteristics. This orientation dependence has been incorporated into ‘unified schemes’, which physically link apparently disparate radio source types via the random orientation of a ‘parent’ population on the plane of the sky. This paper summarises the ‘dual-population unified scheme’ paradigm investigated by Wall & Jackson (1997) and Jackson & Wall (1999) and discusses some of its implications with respect to radio source cosmology.

We present a detailed inhomogeneous chemical evolution study that considers for the first-time neutron star mergers as major r-process sources, and compare this scenario with the ones in which lower-mass (in the range 8–10 M⊙) or higher-mass core-collapse supernovae (with masses ≥20 M⊙) act as dominant r-process sites. We conclude that it is not possible at present to distinguish between the lower-mass and higher-mass supernovae scenarios within the framework of inhomogeneous chemical evolution. However, neutron-star mergers seem to be ruled out as the dominant r-process source, since their low rates of occurrence would lead to r-process enrichment that is not consistent with observations.