We estimated that rotation measure (RM) due to the intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF) in the cosmic web is ~ 1–10 rad m−2. The RMs could be tested with the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and SKA pathfinders.

We summarize NAOJ's efforts to promote astronomy in developing nations. The Office of International Relations, collaborations with the Office of Public Outreach at NAOJ and with the East Asia Core Observatories Association (EACOA), has engaged children, students and educators about astronomy development in the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, we introduce “You are Galileo!“ project, which is a very well received astronomy education program for children. We also report on a continuing effort by the Japanese Government in support of astronomy programs in the developing nations.

Many multiple planet systems have been found by both radial velocity (RV) and transit surveys, such as the Kepler mission. Period ratio distribution of these planet candidates show that they do not prefer to be in or near Mean Motion Resonance (MMR). Nevertheless, there are small but significant excesses of candidate pairs both spaced slightly exterior to exact resonance, particular near the first order of MMR, such as 2:1 and 3:2. Here, we first review recent observational constraints on these multiple transiting systems and theoretical models, which attempt to understand their period ratio distributions. Then we identify a statistical effect based on an intrinsic asymmetry associated with MMR, and find it play an important role in shaping the period ratio distribution near MMR. Last but least, we also find such an intrinsic asymmetry is existing in asteroids of our solar system.

Recent observations, suggesting that subpulse drifting, pulse nulling and profile mode-changes are related phenomena, are reviewed and it is argued that these are associated with global changes in the magnetosphere. Long simultaneous multi-frequency observations are useful to test this premise as is illustrated by the preliminary results from a recent study of PSR B0031–07, B0809+74 and B2319+60. Such observations for a larger sample of pulsars will be useful to constrain recent models, invoking global changes in the pulsar magnetosphere, proposed to explain observations demonstrating association of spin-down changes with profile mode-changes.

Radio pulsars are fascinating and extremely useful objects. Despite our on-going difficulties in understanding the details of their emission physics, they can be used as precise cosmic clocks in a wide-range of experiments – in particular for probing gravitational physics. While the reader should consult the contributions to these proceedings to learn more about this exciting field of discovering, exploiting and understanding pulsars, we will concentrate here on on the usage of pulsars as gravity labs.

Carbonaceous cosmic dust is observed through infrared spectroscopy either in absorption or in emission and the details of the spectral features are believed to shed some light on its structure and finally enable the study of its life cycle. Other spectral domains also contain some information, as does the UV bump at 217 nm. In order to progress on the understanding of these spectral features, many laboratory works are devoted to the production and characterization of laboratory analogues. Generally several analytical tools are used in combination to better analyse the intimate structure of the analogues and the influence of the nanostructuration on the spectral properties. In this proceeding We will focus on the elaboration of new spectral parameters that enables the nanostructuration of the carriers of the AIBs to be traced.

In this paper, a sample of planetary nebulae in the Galaxy's inner-disk and bulge is used to find the galactocentric distance that optimally separates these two populations in terms of their abundances. Statistical distance scales were used to investigate the distribution of abundances across the disk–bulge interface, while a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was used to find the distance at which the chemical properties of these regions separate optimally. The statistical analysis indicates that, on average, the inner population is characterized by lower abundances than the outer component. Additionally, for the α-element abundances, the inner population does not follow the disk's radial gradient toward the Galactic Center. Based on our results, we suggest a bulge–disk interface at 1.5 kpc, marking the transition between the bulge and the inner disk of the Galaxy as defined by the intermediate-mass population.

In this paper, we study twisting motions of the penumbral filaments of active region NOAA 10930. At first, they made unwinding motions. After unwinding, the filaments are found to twist again and developed the opposite chirality in them. These observational results indicate that penumbral filaments are more inclined to be the twisted magnetic flux tubes in nature.

The multi-wavelength pulsed emission from young pulsars and millisecond pulsars can be well modeled with the single-pole 3-dimension annular gap and core gap model. To distinguish our single magnetic pole model from two-pole models (e.g. outer gap model and two-pole caustic model), the convincing values of the magnetic inclination angle and the viewing angle will play a key role.

This talk is an attempt to combine recent insights into the nature of the nuclear star clusters in galaxies of various morphologies into a coherent (albeit simplistic) picture for their formation, growth, and eventual destruction.

We use visual classifications of the brightest 250,000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Main Galaxy Sample provided by citizen scientists via the Galaxy Zoo project (www.galaxyzoo.org, Lintott et al. 2008) to identify a sample of local disc galaxies with reliable bar identifications.

These data, combined with information on the atomic gas content from the ALFALFA survey (Haynes et al. 2011) show that disc galaxies with higher gas content have lower bar fractions.

We use a gas deficiency parameter to show that disc galaxies with more/less gas than expected for their stellar mass are less/more likely to host bars. Furthermore, we see that at a fixed gas content there is no residual correlation between bar fraction and stellar mass. We argue that this suggests previously observed correlations between galaxy colour/stellar mass and (strong) bar fraction (e.g. from the sample in Masters et al. 2011, and also see Nair & Abraham 2010) could be driven by the interaction between bars and the gas content of the disc, since more massive, optically redder disc galaxies are observed to have lower gas contents.

Furthermore we see evidence that at a fixed gas content the global colours of barred galaxies are redder than those of unbarred galaxies. We suggest that this could be due to the exchange of angular momentum beyond co-rotation which might stop a replenishment of gas from external sources, and act as a source of feedback to temporarily halt or reduce the star formation in the outer parts of barred discs.

These results (published as Masters et al. 2012) combined with those of Skibba et al. (2012), who use the same sample to show a clear (but subtle and complicated) environmental dependence of the bar fraction in disc galaxies, suggest that bars are intimately linked to the evolution of disc galaxies.

Astronomy in Antarctica is largely carried out in winter, and so winterover scientists are required to run the instruments. A winterover appointment is a unique opportunity for a scientist, but brings challenges for both the scientist and the larger instrument team. We give a brief review of how winterovers work and their experiences. Although recent projects have required less support from winterover scientists, we believe that they will be a feature of Antarctic astronomy and astrophysics into the future.

The formation of stars from gas drives the evolution of galaxies. Yet, it remains one of the hardest processes to understand when trying to connect observations of modern and high-redshift stellar and galaxy populations to models of large scale structure formation. It has become clear that the star formation rate at redshifts z > 2 drops off rather more quickly than was thought even five years ago. Theoretical models have tended to overpredict the star formation rate at these high redshifts substantially, primarily due to overcooling. Overcooling in galaxies typically occurs because of unphysical radiative cooling. As a result, insufficient turbulence is driven by stellar feedback in galaxies. I show that such turbulence has the net effect of strongly inhibiting star formation, despite its ability to locally promote star formation by compression. Radiation pressure appears less likely to be a dominant driver of the turbulence than has been argued, but supernova and magnetorotational instabilities remain viable mechanisms. Gravity alone cannot be the main driver, as otherwise well-resolved models without feedback would accurately predict star formation rates. Star formation rate surface density correlates well with observed molecular gas surface density, as well as with other tracers of high density material. Correlation does not, however, necessarily imply causation. In this case, it appears that both molecule formation and star formation occur as a consequence of gravitational collapse, with molecules typically playing an important but not an essential role in cooling. The basic concept that gravitational instability drives star formation remains a true guide through the thickets of complexity surrounding this topic. I finally briefly note that understanding ionization heating and radiation pressure from the most massive stars will likely require much higher resolution models (sub-parsec scale) than resolving supernova feedback.

The wide variety of low metallicity galaxies of the local universe serve as convenient laboratories to study the evolution of gas and dust and conditions for star formation in environments which may resemble those of the early universe. The Herschel Dwarf Galaxy Survey is studying the far infrared (FIR) and submillimeter (submm) properties of the gas and dust in galaxies with metallicity values as low as 1/45 that of solar. With complementary Spitzer, Laboca/APEX, Scuba/JCMT data, the dust spectral energy distributions are well constrained now, providing more accurate dust masses. We find a steep drop in dust-to-gas mass ratio (D/G) when the metallicity is below 12+log(O/H) ∼ 8. A submillimeter excess can be found in some low metallicity galaxies, which, when present, becomes apparent at wavelengths at or longer than 500 μm. While CO is difficult to observe in low metallicity gas, the FIR fine structure lines, on the other hand, are very luminous and highlight a potentially important reservoir of CO-free molecular gas, better traced by the 158 μm [CII] line.

We present a statistical tool to characterize correlation between the column density structure and the polarized emission from a molecular cloud. This tool uses the gradient as an estimator of the directionality of the structure in order to systematically relate the orientation of filaments and cores to the orientation of the magnetic field inferred from the polarization vectors.

Studying the molecular phase of the interstellar medium in galaxies is fundamental for the understanding of the onset and evolution of star formation and the growth of supermassive black holes. We can use molecules as observational tools exploiting them as tracers of chemical, physical and dynamical conditions. In this short review, key molecules (e.g. HCN, HCO+, HNC, HC3N, CN, H3O+) in identifying the nature of buried activity and its evolution are discussed including some standard astrochemical scenarios. Furthermore, we can use IR excited molecular emission to probe the very inner regions of luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) allowing us to get past the optically thick dust barrier of the compact obscured nuclei, e.g. in the dusty LIRG NGC4418. High resolution studies are often necessary to separate effects of excitation and radiative transport from those of chemistry - one example is absorption and effects of stimulated emission in the ULIRG Arp220. Finally, molecular gas in large scale galactic outflows is briefly discussed.

We study an EUV wave initiated in active region (AR) 11261 on 2011 August 4 by using the SDO/AIA and the Hinode/EIS. We found that: (1) the EUV wave interacted with AR loops between AR 11261 and AR 11263, and exited mass flows in these loops. (2) EIS observations of AR loops in AR 11263 revealed that at the time of the wave transit, the original red-shifted feature had an increase of about 3 km s−1, and the original blue-shifted feature slightly weakened. These findings could be explained in the framework of a fast-mode magnetosonic wave interpretation for EUV waves.

Star clusters are one of fundamental building blocks of galactic disks. They form in a potential well of spiral arms and travel in the disk. We performed N-body simulation of star clusters in stellar disk with “live” spiral arms. In this simulation, both star clusters and stellar disks are modeled as N-body systems. We found that star clusters migrated in the galactic disk in a timescale of their galactic rotation. The tidal tails spread over a few kpc, but they might be detectable if we are able to measure their velocity.

Prof. Baozhou Zhang hosted a meeting of IAU Commission 50 members with Chinese academics and lighting professionals at Beijing Normal University.

NGC 1097 is a nearby barred spiral galaxy believed to be interacting with the elliptical galaxy NGC 1097A located to its northwest. It hosts a Seyfert 1 nucleus surrounded by a circumnuclear starburst ring. Two straight dust lanes connected to the ring extend almost continuously out to the bar. The other ends of the dust lanes attach to two main spiral arms. To provide a physical understanding of its structural and kinematical properties, two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations have been carried out. Numerical calculations reveal that many features of the gas morphology and kinematics can be reproduced provided that the gas flow is governed by a gravitational potential associated with a slowly rotating strong bar. By including the self-gravity of the gas disk in our calculation, we have found the starburst ring to be gravitationally unstable which is consistent with the observation in Hsieh et al. (2011). Our simulations also show that gas can flow into the region within the starburst ring even after its formation, leading to the coexistence of both a nuclear ring and a circumnuclear disk.