Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE) commenced on the occasion of International Geophysical Year in 1957–1958. Syowa Station, the primary station for JARE operations, is located along the northeastern coastal region of Lützow-Holm Bay, East Antarctica (69° 00′S, 39° 35′E), and was opened on 29 January 1957. Since then, JARE have been carrying out research in various fields of earth and planetary sciences and life science. Astronomical science, however, has not been popular in Antarctica. In 1995, JARE established a new inland station, Dome Fuji Station (77° 19′S, 39° 42′E), which, at 3,810 m a.s.l., is located on one of major domes of the Antarctic ice sheet, some 1,000 km south of Syowa. The climatic conditions at Dome Fuji are harsh, with an annual average air temperature of −54°C, and a recorded minimum of −79°C. In 2007, JARE completed scientific drilling to obtain ice core samples of the Antarctic ice sheet reaching 3,050 m in depth. These ice cores record environmental conditions of the earth extending back some 720,000 B.P. In recent years, it is widely known that the high-altitude environment of inland Antarctica is suitable for astronomical observations and the Japanese astronomy community identified Dome Fuji Station as a potential candidate for a future astronomical observatory. In this article, the history of Japanese Antarctic activities are described in terms of access to the inland plateau of the Antarctic continent. The general scheme and future plans of science objectives and logistics of JARE will also be introduced.

It has recently been shown that there is a close correlation between the slowdown rates and the pulse shapes of six pulsars, and between the slowdown rates and the flux density of three others. This indicates that these phenomena are related by changes in the current flows in the pulsar magnetospheres. In this paper we review the observational status of these studies, which have now been extended to a total of 16 pulsars having correlated slowdown and pulse emission properties. The changes seem to be due to sudden switching between just two discrete magnetospheric states in the well-known processes of mode-changing and pulse nulling. We also address how widespread these phenomena are in the wider pulsar population.

We present the first results from the systematic observational campaign aimed at studying rapid photometric variability (i.e., flickering) in southern symbiotic stars. In particular, we report on the discovery of strong flickering from V648Car (also known as SS73-17), a poorly studied system belonging to the small class of hard X-ray emitting symbiotic stars. To our knowledge, with a U-band flickering amplitude >0.6mag over time scales of minutes, it is one of the most significant flickering ever reported from a symbiotic star.

We investigated the environment of the infrared dust bubbles S51 (Zhang & Wang 2012a), N68 (Zhang & Wang 2012b), and N131 (Zhang et al. 2012) from catalogue of Churchwell et al. (2006), and searched for evidence of triggered star formation.

While observations in the radio band are providing essential information on the innermost structures of relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei (AGN), the recent detection by Fermi of gamma-ray emission from many hundreds of blazars shows that the maximum jet power is emitted at high energies. Multi-wavelength monitoring observations further allow variability studies of the AGN spectral energy distributions over 13 orders of magnitude in frequency. The Joint Discussion offered the possibility for a comprehensive discussion of advances in the observational domain and stimulated theoretical discussion about our current understanding of jet physics.

Recently, PSR J0738-4042 has grown a bright new emission component in its average pulse profile. Using data from Parkes and HartRAO, spanning back to the early 1980s, and applying statistical techniques to model the pulse profile shape with time, we have uncovered unexpected long-term variability, which is very well correlated with changes in the spin-down rate. We present these findings in the context of a growing population of radio-variable pulsars with correlated timing irregularities, including the intermittent pulsars, state-changing pulsars and other individual examples.

M dwarf stars are attractive targets in the search for habitable worlds as a result of their relative abundance and proximity, making them likely targets for future direct detection efforts. Hot super-Earths as well as gas giants have already been detected around a number of early M dwarfs, and the former appear to be the high-mass end of the population of rocky, terrestrial exoplanets. The Carnegie Astrometric Planet Search (CAPS) program has been underway since March 2007, searching ~ 100 nearby late M, L, and T dwarfs for gas giant planets on orbits wide enough for habitable worlds to orbit interior to them. The CAPSCam-N camera on the 2.5-m du Pont telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory has demonstrated the ability to detect planets as low in mass as Saturn orbiting at several AU around late M dwarfs within 15 pc. Over the next decade, the CAPS program will provide new constraints on the planetary census around late M dwarf stars, and hence on the suitability of these nearby planetary systems for supporting life.

Almost all meteorites (about 99% by number) are samples from a few hundreds of asteroids that are leftover from planetesimals and protoplanets formed within several million years after the birth of the Solar System. These meteorites record detailed evolutionary history of dust to planets, including condensation, accretion, aqueous alteration, thermal metamorphism, partial and total melting.

Site testing carried out on Ellesmere Island over recent years has shown that mountainous coastal terrain there can provide high clear-sky fractions in the long dark season, with low precipitable water-vapour column and prospects for excellent seeing. This presents new possibilities for time-domain and survey-mode science in the northern hemisphere, allowing uninterrupted high-precision photometry in the optical/near-infrared, but also gains in the submillimetre/millimetre. Efforts underway at the Eureka research station, at 80 degrees latitude, are reviewed. This location provides year-round access to a nearby site being developed as a pathfinder observatory. A program of variable-star and transient searches involving a wide-field imaging system has begun, with some early results. Plans include extrasolar-planet hunting via transit surveys, and future directions are discussed.

The investigation of the quasi-normal modes of oscillation of compact stars can reveal much information about their equation of state and internal structure mainly through the analysis of the expected emission of gravitational waves. In this work we study non-radial oscillation modes of strange stars consisting of color superconducting quark matter. We focus on the fundamental and pressure oscillation modes within the frame of the Cowling approximation. We discuss the observable features that may allow a differentiation among hadronic stars, strange stars, and strange stars with color superconductivity.

We have conducted a survey of deuterium fractionation of N2H+, RD(N2H+) ≡ N(N2D+)/N(N2H+), with the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO) Submillimeter Telescope (SMT) to assess the use of RD(N2H+) as an evolutionary tracer among massive protostellar/cluster cores in early stages. Our sample includes 32 dense cores in various evolutionary stages, from high-mass starless cores (HMSCs), high-mass protostellar objects (HMPOs), to ultra-compact (UC) HII regions, in infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) and high infrared extinction clouds. The results show a decreasing trend in deuterium fractionation with evolutionary stage traced by gas temperature and line width (Fig. 1). A moderate increasing trend of deuterium fractionation with the CO depletion factor is also found among cores in IRDCs and HMSCs. These suggest a general chemical behavior of deuterated species in low- and high-mass protostellar candidates. Upper limits to the ionization degree are also estimated to be in the range of 4 × 10−8 − 5 × 10−6.

Wiggling structures in a bipolar outflow may be attributed to orbital motion of a binary system or precession of an accretion disk perturbed by a companion. The shocked knots along the outflow axis display a morphology with either mirror symmetry due to the orbital motion or point symmetry resulted from disk precession. Using the Submillimeter Array (SMA), our CO (2-1) and SiO (5-4) observations show wiggling structures in the collimated bipolar outflow driven by the NGC 1333 IRAS 2A Class 0 protostar (d ~ 200 pc). By fitting the peak positions of emission knots, we can examine the lateral displacement of the molecular jet to constrain parameters of the unresolved binary system, such as the binary separation and total binary mass. With an angular resolution of ~3″, we have determined the knot positions in SiO (5–4)(Fig. 1) and CO (2–1). As a first attempt, we consider the scenario of orbital motion in a binary system and estimate a total binary mass of ~ 1M⊙ and a binary separation of roughly ~ 20 AU, corresponding to ~ 0.1″. Such a small separation makes it challenging to resolve this hypothesized proto-binary system, which is thought to be responsible for the large-scale quadrupolar outflow nearly perpendicular with each other in CO (1–0).

Detecting neutrinos associated with the still enigmatic sources of cosmic rays has reached a new watershed with the completion of IceCube, the first detector with sensitivity to the anticipated fluxes. In this review, we will briefly revisit the rationale for constructing kilometer-scale neutrino detectors and summarize the status of the field.

Based both on observations and simulations, recent works propose that the speed of the spiral pattern in disk galaxies may decrease with increasing radius; the implications are that patterns are actually short-lived, and that the azimuthal color/age gradients across spiral arms predicted by density wave theory could not be produced. We, however, have consistently found such gradients, and measured spiral pattern speeds by comparing the observations with stellar population synthesis models (González & Graham 1996; Martínez-García et al. 2009a, b; Martínez-García & González-Lópezlira 2011). Here, we summarize our previous results in non-barred and weakly barred spirals, together with six new, as yet unpublished, objects. On the other hand, we have indeed found a trend whereby pattern speeds at smaller radii are larger than expected from a model that assumes purely circular orbits (cf. Figure 1), likely due to the effect of spiral shocks on the orbits of newborn stars. The results suggest that spirals may behave as steady long-lived patterns.

We have compiled a sample of 106 lesser-known cores from the Herschel Galactic Cold Cloud Cores Key Program (Juvela, M. et al. 2007). Based on the assumption, that these represent the crowd of the cold cores in the galaxy well, we have started a deep individual investigation, beginning with a ground-based follow-up and molecular line measurement at IRAM 30m telescope. We present the methods and calculated values of the most important parameters on a selected source: the G130.38+11.25 molecular cloud, which is part of the L1340.

We study the cross-correlation between X-rays of different energies for the atoll-type source 4U 1608–52 with RXTE, and find the cross-correlation evolutes along the different branches. The anti-correlation is reported from the Galactic black hole candidates and Z-type luminous sources in their hard states. Our results are a little different from the Z-type sources. Here we provide the first evidence that a similar anti-correlated feature can also be found in atoll-type source, and it is not corresponding to the lowest accretion rate.

Since the discovery of rotating galaxy bulges (e.g. Pease 1918; Babcock 1938, 1939), especially in the 1970s (e.g. Rubin, Ford & Kumar 1973; Pellet 1976; Bertola & Capaccioli 1977; Peterson 1978; Mebold et al. 1979; Kormendy & Illingworth 1979), coupled with early computer simulations of disks which formed rotating, exponential-like “pseudobulges” (e.g. Bardeen 1975; Hohl 1975, and references therein), a number of often over-looked problems pertaining to the identification of real “pseudobulges” have arisen. Drawing on my recent review article of disk galaxy structure and modern scaling laws (Graham 2012), some of these important issues are presented. Topics include: classical spheroids with exponential light distributions; curved but continuous scaling relations involving the ‘effective’ structural parameters; the old age of most bulge stars (e.g. Thomas & Davies 2006; MacArthur et al. 2009); that most disk galaxies have bulge-to-disk flux ratios < 1/3 (Graham & Worley 2008); rotation in simulated merger remnants (e.g. Bekki 2010; Keselman & Nusser 2012) plus many other frustrating yet interesting reasons why rotation may not be a definitive signature of bulges built via secular processes (e.g. Babusiaux et al. 2010; Williams et al. 2010, Qu et al. 2011; Saha et al. 2012)

Cometary nuclei consist of aggregates of interstellar dust particles less than ~1 μm in diameter and can produce rocky dust particles as a result of the sublimation of ice as comets enter the inner solar system. Samples of fine-grained particles known as chondritic porous interplanetary dust particles (CP-IDPs), possibly from comets, have been collected from the Earth's stratosphere. Owing to their fine-grained texture, these particles were previously thought to be condensates formed directly from interstellar gas. However, coarse-grained chondrule-like objects have recently been observed in samples from comet 81P/Wild 2. The chondrule-like objects are chemically distinct from chondrules in meteoritic chondrites, possessing higher MnO contents (0.5 wt%) in olivine and low-Ca pyroxene. In this study, we analyzed AMM samples by secondary electron microscopy and backscattered electron images for textural observations and compositional analysis. We identified thirteen AMMs with characteristics similar to those of the 81P/Wild 2 samples, and believe that recognition of these similarities necessitates reassessment of the existing models of chondrule formation.

We present a study of the kinematics of a sample of isolated spiral galaxies in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G). We use Hα Fabry-Perot data from the GHαFaS instrument at the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma, complemented with images at 3.6 microns, in the R band and in the Hα filter. The resulting data cubes and velocity field maps allow a complete study of the kinematics of a galaxy, including in-depth investigations of the rotation curve, velocity moment maps, velocity residual maps, gradient maps and position-velocity (PV) diagrams. We find clear evidence of the secular evolution processes going on in these galaxies, such as asymmetries in the velocity field in the bar zone, and non-circular motions, probably in response to the potential of the structural components of the galaxies, or to past or present interactions.