Gaia is a space astrometry mission, a broad survey project following the measurement and operational principles of Hipparcos. It will help solving one of the most difficult yet deeply fundamental challenges in modern astronomy: to create an extraordinarily precise three-dimensional map of about one billion stars throughout our Galaxy and beyond. In the process, it will map their three-dimensional motions, which encode the origin and subsequent evolution of the Galaxy. Through comprehensive photometric and spectroscopic classification, it will provide the detailed physical properties of each star observed: characterising their luminosity, temperature, gravity, and elemental composition. This massive stellar census will provide the basic observational data to tackle an enormous range of important problems related to the origin, structure, and evolutionary history of our Galaxy.

It is now more than eleven years since the discovery of the first accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar. Since then, eleven additional systems have been found, two of them during the last year. Here I briefly discuss the most recent developments with respect to these systems.

Distances to a large sample of long period variables are derived using a PL-relation and a 3D model for the reddening. Their use as a tracer of galactic structure is discussed.

We present the main achievements of the ARENA network and a set of recommendations for the development of astronomy and astrophysics at CONCORDIA (Dome C)

The simultaneous investigation of Li and Be in stars is a powerful tool in the study of the evolutionary mixing processes. Here, we present beryllium abundances in stars along the whole evolutionary sequence of the open cluster IC 4651. This cluster has a metallicity of [Fe/H] = +0.11 and an age of 1.2 or 1.7 Gyr. Abundances have been determined from high-resolution, high signal-to-noise UVES spectra using spectrum synthesis and model atmospheres. Lithium abundances for the same stars were determined in a previous work. Confirming previous results, we find that the Li dip is also a Be dip. For post-main-sequence stars, the Be dilution starts earlier within the Hertzsprung gap than expected from classical predictions, as does the Li dilution. Theoretical hydrodynamical models are able to reproduce well all the observed features.

Differential rotational rate of the large scale magnetic field and its temporal dependence has been evidenced at different latitudes through activity cycles 21-23. Rotational rate of the magnetic field at the latitudes above 55 degrees doesn't getting slower. Torsional waves with 11-year period are clearly seen in the magnetic field rotation. Rotation is slower where and when the magnetic field is getting stronger.

The time of the magnetic field emergence to the photosphere was estimated.

It was revealed the existence of quasi-stable over 30 years exceptionally regular and symmetric in the both hemispherest longitudinal structure. This structure is originated from the tachocline zone rotating like a rigid body with the rotation rate corresponding to the rotation in the photosphere on the 55-60 degrees of the helio-latitudes.

We present our new observing project searching for pulsations in M dwarfs.

I review basic observational features in Population I stars which strongly implicate rotation as a mixing agent; these include dispersion at fixed temperature in coeval populations and main sequence lithium depletion for a range of masses at a rate which decays with time. New developments related to the possible suppression of mixing at late ages, close binary mergers and their lithium signature, and an alternate origin for dispersion in young cool stars tied to radius anomalies observed in active young stars are discussed. I highlight uncertainties in models of Population II lithium depletion and dispersion related to the treatment of angular momentum loss. Finally, the origins of rotation are tied to conditions in the pre-main sequence, and there is thus some evidence that environment and planet formation could impact stellar rotational properties. This may be related to recent observational evidence for cluster to cluster variations in lithium depletion and a connection between the presence of planets and stellar lithium depletion.

A popular candidate of dark energy, currently driving an accelerated expansion of the universe, is a slowly rolling scalar field or quintessence. A scalar field, however, must couple with other sources of matter. Consequently, its dynamical evolution can result in extra interactions between standard particles, which are mediated by the field, and to a variation in the fundamental parameters. Curiously, it has been reported that observations of a number of quasar absorption lines suggest that the fine structure constant was smaller in the past, at redshifts in the range z=1-3 (Murphy et al. (2003), Murphy et al. (2004), but see also Srianand et al. (2007)). Could this indeed be the signature of a slowly evolving scalar field?

In this article I review measurements of deuterium in the Milky Way.

In this proceeding I briefly discuss the possibility of relic decaying or annihilating particles to explain the cosmological 7Li anomaly and/or to be the source of significant amounts of pre-galactic 6Li. The effect of relic massive charged particles through catalysis of nuclear reactions is also discussed. The possibility of a connection of the 7Li problem to the cosmic dark matter and physics beyond the standard model of particle physics, such as supersymmetry, is noted.

We have studied the role of fundamental constants in an updated recombination scenario. We focus on the time variation of the fine structure constant α, and the electron mass me in the early Universe. In the last years, helium recombination has been studied in great detail revealing the importance of taking new physical processes into account in the calculation of the recombination history. The equations to solve the detailed recombination scenario can be found for example in Wong et al. 2008. In the equation for helium recombination, a term which accounts for the semi-forbidden transition 23p–11s is added. Furthermore, the continuum opacity of HI is taken into account by a modification in the escape probability of the photons that excite helium atoms, with the fitting formulae proposed Kholupenko et al 2007. We have analized the dependences of the quantities involved in the detailed recombination scenario on α and me. We have performed a statistical analysis with COSMOMC to constrain the variation of α and me at the time of neutral hydrogen formation. The observational set used for the analysis was data from the WMAP 5-year temperature and temperature-polarization power spectrum and other CMB experiments such as CBI, ACBAR and BOOMERANG and the power spectrum of the 2dFGRS. Considering the joint variation of α and me we obtain the following bounds: -0.011 < < 0.019 and -0.068 < < 0.030 (68% c.l.). When considering only the variation of one fundamental constant we obtain: -0.010 < < 0.008 and -0.04 < < 0.02 (68% c.l.). We compare these results with the ones presented in Landau et al 2008, which were obtained in the standard recombination scenario and using WMAP 3 year release data. The constraints are tighter in the current analysis, which is an expectable fact since we are working with more accurate data from WMAP. The bounds obtained are consistent with null variation, for both α and me, but in the present analysis, the 68% confidence limits on the variation of both constants have changed. In the case of α, the present limit is more consistent with null variation than the previous one, while in the case of me the single parameters limits have moved toward lower values. To study the origin of this difference, we have performed another statistical analysis, namely the analysis of the standard recombination scenario together with WMAP5 data, the other CMB data sets and the 2dFGRS power spectrum. We see that the change in the obtained results is due to the new WMAP data set, and not to the new recombination scenario. The obtained results for the cosmological parameters are in agreement within 1 σ with the ones obtained by the WMAP collaboration, without considering variation of fundamental constants.

We present a new method for constructing equilibrium phase models for stellar systems. Applications of the iterative method include both modelling of observational data and the construction of initial condition for N-body simulations.

For the formation of elliptical galaxies, two scenarios, monolithic collapse vs. major merger, have been debated. We simulate the formation and chemodynamical evolution of 128 Es from the CDM initial fluctuations, using the GRAPE-SPH code that include star formation, supernovae feedback, and chemical enrichment. In our CDM-based scenario, galaxies form through the successive merging of subgalaxies with various masses.

We provide observational constraints on disk galaxy evolution for a sample of 28 local edge-on early-type (S0–Sb) disk galaxies. We do this in two ways: (i) we use simple dynamical modelling techniques to constrain their stellar and dark matter content (Williams et al. 2009) and (ii) we compare the zero points of the Tully-Fisher relations (TFRs; Tully & Fisher 1977) of the spirals and S0s.

Dynamical models of galaxies are limited by the paucity of kinematic data at large radii. Beyond the feasible limit of integrated-light spectroscopy, we rely on discrete tracers such as planetary nebulae and globular clusters. We describe a large (~200) sample of planetary nebula (PN) velocities in the outer regions of the cD elliptical NGC 1399. These data were obtained with a counter-dispersed slitless-spectroscopy technique which traces the kinematics to about 60 kpc (McNeil et al., 2009).