We combine 12CO J = 3 − 2 for 155 nearby galaxies, obtained as part of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) Nearby Galaxies Legacy Survey (NGLS), with star formation rates derived from Hα luminosities to probe the relation between warm, dense gas and star formation. These data are compared with ancillary data from the literature, including infrared (IR) and 1.4 GHz radio continuum luminosities and Hi masses. We find a good correlation between CO J = 3 − 2 luminosities and Hα-derived star formation rates (SFRs), which is in agreement with previous studies. Several groups of galaxies show a peculiar behaviour in the SFR(Hα) − LCOJ = 3 − 2 plot, which disappears when using IR data. We analyse these regions and propose several hypotheses to explain this behaviour, including group interactions and very recent (≲20 Myr) bursts of star formation only traced by Hα emission. While atomic hydrogen is hardly related with SFR, molecular and total gas (Hi + H2) show similar correlations with Hα luminosities. No correlation is found between CO J = 3−2 luminosity and metallicity, although galaxies with low metallicity are more likely to not be detected. We discuss that CO J = 3 − 2 does not seem to be a significantly better tracer of the star-forming gas, but its independence from metallicity may be used to constrain the conversion factor between CO and H2.

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are among cosmology's most useful tools for measuring extragalactic distances. Their intrinsic brightness, MV=−19.2 mag, and precision, σ=0.12 mag, make for a unique combination to precisely probe cosmic expansion from the nearby to the high-redshift Universe. I describe the current state of the art for measuring distances to SNe Ia—focusing on the current challenges which ultimately limit their precision—as well as prospects for further refinement. I also highlight cosmological applications where they have been especially valuable, and briefly review some future projects which plan to exploit SNe Ia.

A major uncertainty in models for photoionised outflows in AGN is the distance of the gas to the central black hole. We present the results of a massive multiwavelength monitoring campaign on the bright Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 509 to constrain the location of the outflow components dominating the soft X-ray band. Mrk 509 was monitored by XMM-Newton, Integral, Chandra, HST/COS and Swift in 2009. We have studied the response of the photoionised gas to the changes in the ionising flux produced by the central regions. We were able to put tight constraints on the variability of the absorbers from day to year time scales. This allowed us to develop a model for the time-dependent photoionisation in this source. We find that the more highly ionised gas producing most X-ray line opacity is at least 5 pc away from the core; upper limits to the distance of various absorbing components range between 20 pc up to a few kpc. The more lowly ionised gas producing most UV line opacity is at least 100 pc away from the nucleus. These results point to an origin of the dominant, slow (v<1000 km s−1) outflow components in the NLR or torus-region of Mrk 509. We find that while the kinetic luminosity of the outflow is small, the mass carried away is likely larger than the 0.5 Solar mass per year accreting onto the black hole. We also determined the chemical composition of the outflow as well as valuable constraints on the different emission regions. We find for instance that the resolved component of the Fe-K line originates from a region 40–1000 gravitational radii from the black hole, and that the soft excess is produced by Comptonisation in a warm (0.2–1 keV), optically thick (τ~ 10–20) corona near the inner part of the disk.

Planets with very little amount of water on their surface, called “land planets”, have wider habitable zones than that of Earth-like “aqua planets” (Abe et al. 2011). We investigated complete evaporation of surface liquid water for land planets using 1D energy balance model (EBM). We found that complete evaporation occurs when the planetary flux at the dry edge, which is defined as the boundary between the dry zone and the wet zone, exceeds the critical radiation flux of water saturated atmosphere. We define “complete evaporation limit” as the minimum insolation for complete evaporation that a planet receives. This limit depends on latitude of the dry edge, efficiency of meridional heat transport, and atmospheric character that modify the value of the critical flux.

After finding more planets than expected at the shortest period, there has been an effort to explain their numbers by weak tidal friction. However, we find that the strength of tidal dissipation that would produce the occurence distribution found from Kepler planet candidates is different for giant versus medium radii planets. This discrepancy can be resolved if there is a “flow” of the largest planets regularly arriving such that they go through a “hot Jupiter” stage. We also show a correlation of higher stellar Fe/H with higher eccentricity of giant planets that may be from smaller planets having been sent into the star by the migration of the larger planet. This disruption of the orbits of medium and smaller planets could account for the lower occurrence of “hot Neptune” medium radius planets.

A GPU-based acceleration for the direct boundary integral equation method (GPU-DBIE) to extrapolate solar coronal magnetic fields is developed, which is about 1000 times faster than the original DBIE. The 3-d coronal magnetic field is reconstructed for NOAA 11158 on 14-Feb-2011 with the SDO/HMI vector magnetogram as bottom boundary condition. The extrapolated results agree well with the projected SDO/AIA, EUV loops and the STEREO EUV sideviews, which verifies the correctness of our GPU-DBIE method. It is also found that the group of bright EUV loops along magnetic neutral lines agree well with current lines, which may have played an important role in the flare process of the active region.

Surface environment of habitable exoplanets will be important for astrobiologists on exoplanets in near future. Diverse surface environments on the Earth including continents, ocean, and meteorological condition (clouds and rains) serve as the backbone of biodiversity. One of the promising approaches to know the landscape of the terrestrial exoplanets is to use scattered light of the planet through direct imaging.

Since spin rotation and orbital revolution change illuminating area on planetary surface and cause time variation to disk-integrated brightness, light curves carry spatial information on the planetary surface. We propose an inversion technique of annual reflected light curves to sketch a two-dimensional albedo map of exoplanets, named the spin-orbit tomography (SOT). Applying the SOT to realistic simulations of the reflected light of an Earth-twin, we demonstrate how the SOT works. The mean cloud and continental distributions can be roughly obtained with single band photometry and difference of two-bands photometry, respectively. The SOT retrieves the planetary image without actually resolving the planet, which can be used to know the habitat of the exoplanets in near future.

High precision astrometry on radio pulsars can provide model-independent estimates of their distances and velocities. Such estimates serve to calibrate models of the Galactic electron density distribution, thereby improving distance estimates for the entire pulsar population. They can provide independent astrometric information for precision pulse timing, reducing the number of fit parameters and thus potentially improving the sensitivity of pulsar timing arrays to the gravitational wave background. Individual neutron stars also serve as laboratories for astrophysics. For example, distances to highly luminous recycled pulsars identified by the Fermi gamma ray space telescope will constrain their energetics and may serve to probe the equation of state for nuclear matter at extremes of density and pressure. Here we provide an update on ongoing astrometry programs with the Very Long Baseline Array and the scientific results from these efforts.

One of the interesting aspects of optical meteor studies is that the spectral composition of the brightness reveals information about the element composition of the solid particles that enter Earthfs atmosphere from interplanetary space. Deriving composition from optical spectra requires understanding the entry process during which the entering solid interacts with atmospheric species. This is especially so, because most meteors are observed at altitudes where the mean free path changes from tens of meters to millimeters, that is in the 120 km to 80 km altitude range within the atmosphere. The ionization that causes optical emission also reflects radio waves, so that meteors are observed with different kinds of radar instruments. Incoherent scatter radar facilities are in particular designed to study the upper atmosphere by using the backscattering from free electrons and are basically High Power Large Aperture radars. During the past 15 years they have been increasingly used for meteor studies. The phased-array incoherent scatter radars that are currently under development, such as the planned EISCAT-3Dsystem in northern Scandinavia, will further improve the spatial and time resolution of radar observations and will allow simultaneous measurements of the meteors and of the parameters of the surrounding ionosphere. Radar backscattering is also sensitive to objects that are smaller than those detected optically, so that the observations also permit studying the extension of the meteoroid size distribution to smaller sizes. In this presentation we consider the possibilities for measurements with the future EISCAT-3D as a new path of studying the physics of meteor phenomena with high accuracy.

We report on a program to delineate magnetic field structure inside molecular clouds by optical and infrared polarization observations. An ordered magnetic field inside a dense cloud may efficiently align the spinning dust grains to cause a detectable level of optical and near-infrared polarization of otherwise unpolarized background starlight due to dichroic extinction. The near-infrared polarization data were taken by SIRPOL mounted on IRSF in SAAO. Here we present the SIRPOL results in RCW 57, for which the magnetic field is oriented along the cloud filaments, and in Carina Nebula, for which no intrinsic polarization is detected in the turbulent environment. We further describe TRIPOL, a compact and efficient polarimer to acquire polarized images simultaneously at g', r', and i' bands, which is recently developed at Nagoya University for adaption to small-aperture telescopes. We show how optical observations probe the translucent outer parts of a cloud, and when combining with infrared observations probing the dense parts, and with millimeter and submillimeter observations to sutdy the central embedded protostar, if there is one, would yield the magnetic field structure on different length scales in the star-formation process.

Evolutionary scenarios suggest that several mechanisms (from inner secular evolution to accretion/merging) may transform galaxy members, driving groups from an active star forming phase to a more passive, typical of dense environments. We are investigating this transition in a nearby group sample, designed to cover a wide range of properties (see also Marino et al. (2010), Bettoni et al. (2011) and Marino et al. (2012)). We study two groups, USGC U268 and USGC U376 located in different regions of the Leo cloud, through a photometric and kinematic characterization of their member galaxies. We revisit the group membership, using results from recent red-shift surveys, and we investigate their substructures. U268, composed of 10 catalogued members and 11 new added members, has a small fraction (~24%) of early-type galaxies (ETGs). U376 has 16 plus 8 new added members, with ~38% of ETGs. We find the significant substructuring in both groups suggesting that they are likely accreting galaxies. U268 is located in a more loose environment than U376. For each member galaxy, broad band integrated and surface photometry have been obtained in far-UV (FUV) and near-UV (NUV) with GALEX, and in u, g, r, i, z (SDSS) bands. Hα imaging and 2D high resolution kinematical data have been obtained using PUMA Scanning Fabry-Perot interferometer at the 2.12 m telescope in San Pedro Mártir (Baja California, México). We improved the galaxy classification and we detected morphological and kinematical distortions that may be connected to either on-going and/or past interaction/accretion events or environmental induced secular evolution. U268 appears more active than U376, with a large fraction of galaxies showing interaction signatures (60% vs. 13%). The presence of bars among late-type galaxies is ~10% in U268 and 29% in U376. The cumulative distribution of (FUV - NUV) colors of galaxies in U268 is significantly different (bluer) than that of U376's galaxies. Most (80%) of the early-type members in U376 inhabits the red sequence, a large fraction of galaxies, of different morphological types, are located in the green valley, while the blue sequence is under-populated with respect to U268.

The Virtual Atomic and Molecular Data Centre (VAMDC, http://www.vamdc.eu) is an international Consortium that has created an interoperable e-science infrastructure for the exchange of atomic and molecular data. The VAMDC defines standards for the exchange of atomic and molecular data, develop reference implementation of those standards, deploys registries of internet resources (yellow pages), designs user applications in order to meet the user needs, builds data access layers above databases to provide unified outputs from these databases, cares about asynchronous queries with workflows and connects its infrastructure to the grid. The paper describes the current service deployment of the VAMDC data infrastructure across our registered databases and the key features of the current infrastructure.

Using results from parametric multi-component multi-band image fitting of 1000 local massive galaxies in the SDSS, I investigate scaling relations of elliptical galaxies and bulges of disk galaxies. I show that ellipticals and bulges occupy different loci in both the edge-on and face-on views of the fundamental plane. In addition, ellipticals and bulges have offset mass-size relations (see Fig. 1). These results imply that massive bulges are not just massive ellipticals with a surrounding disk, a misconception driven by early studies. This is evidence that massive ellipticals and bulges have different formation histories, with important consequences for studies on galaxy formation and evolution. Full details can be seen in Gadotti (2009).

Rotation is a fundamental physical parameter in stellar astrophysics, playing an important role on the formation and evolution of stars. This parameter may also offer valuable information on stellar magnetism, mixing in the stellar interior, tidal interactions in close binary, as well as on angular momentum transfer and rotational breaking due to planets. The present work brings the results of an unprecedented study on the behavior of the distribution of the projected rotational velocity (v sin i) as a function of galactic position, on the basis of an unique sample of 14000 main-sequence field stars, along the spectral regions F and G. The vsini measurements used in this analyses were obtained from observations carried out with the CORAVEL spectrometers, with a precision better than about 1 km/s.

GM Cephei is an active T Tauri star in the young open cluster Trumpler 37, showing abrupt UX Orionis type of photometric variability. Its light curves exhibit frequent, sporadic brightening events, each of <0.5 mag and lasting for days, which must have been originated from unsteady circumstellar accretion. In addition, the star undergoes a brightness drop up to ~1 mag lasting for about a month, during which the star became bluer when fainter. Moreover, the brightness drops seem to have a recurrence timescale of about 300 days. It is proposed that the brightness drop arises from obscuration of the central star by an orbiting dust concentration, exemplifying disk inhomogeneity in transition between grain coagulation and planetesimal formation in a young circumstellar disk. GM Cep was found to show a few percent polarization in the optical wavelengths, and an enhanced level of polarization during the occultation phase.

Early design studies for the future Exo-Planet Imaging Camera and Specrotgraph (EPICS) on the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) show the ability to probe the region of super-Earths in the habitable zone of stars within 5pc (including Gilese 581d). However, these planets will be lost to us if the correct choice of integral field spectrograph (IFS) technology is not selected for such an instrument the ability to fit and remove the speckle noise that remains is crucial to reaching these contrasts.

We conclusively demonstrate, though the use of an experimental setup producing an artificial speckle, that slicer based IFSs and post-processing using spectral deconvolution can achieve speckle rejection factors exceeding 103. Contrary to popular belief, we do not find any evidence that this choice of IFS technology limits the achievable contrast. Coupled with extreme adaptive optics and high performance coronographs, a slicer based integral field spectrograph could achieve contrasts exceeding 109, enabling these super-Earths to be detected in the habitable zone of nearby stars, making it an attractive option for the next generation of instruments being designed for the direct detection of extra solar planets.

An important factor controlling galaxy evolution is feedback from massive stars. It is believed that the nature and intensity of stellar feedback changes as a function of galaxy mass and metallicity. At low mass and metallicity, feedback from massive stars is mainly in the form of photoionizing radiation. At higher mass and metallicity, it is in stellar winds. I Zw 18 is a local blue, compact dwarf galaxy that meets the requirements for a primitive galaxy: low halo mass <109M⊙, strong photoionizing radiation, no galactic outflow, and very low metallicity, log(O/H)+12=7.2. We will describe the properties of massive stars and their role in the evolution of I Zw 18, based on analysis of ultraviolet images and spectra obtained with HST.

With kilohertz quasi-periodic oscillation (kHz QPO) sources in neutron star low mass X-ray binaries (NS-LMXBs) published up to now, we analyze the centroid frequency (ν) distribution of twin kHz QPOs. We find that Atoll and Z sources show the similar distributions of ν1 and ν2, which indicate that twin kHz QPOs may be the common property of NS-LXMBs and have the similar physical origins. The mean values of ν1 and ν2 in Atoll sources are higher than those in Z sources, and we consider that this may because the QPO signals are sheltered by the thicken accretion disk or corona in Z sources. The maximums of ν2 in both Atoll and Z sources are the same order as the Keplerian orbital frequency of the NS surface, so kHz QPOs could occur near the NS surface.