Although the maser hypothesis for anomalous OH emission encounters difficulties it has not been seriously questioned because, as pointed out by Turner, no alternative has been available. The following ideas might suggest that there is an alternative hypothesis for anomalous OH emission.

Scattering of radiation from solar radio sources by in homogeneities in the electron density structure of the corona can have marked effects on the observed time profile and the brightness distribution. These effects are appreciable for any localized source emitting a brief burst of radiation and are most pronounced when the radiation propagates close to the plasma level; it is such sources, illustrated here by those of type III bursts, that will be considered in this paper.

Dissipation of shock waves has often been proposed as the energy source required to sustain the outward temperature rise in the solar atmosphere. Theoretical models for the heating process have been developed by equating the mechanical energy input to the radiative energy loss at each height, but neither of these processes is well understood, and the lack of data means that the models are necessarily crude.

Baade (1963) pointed out three regions of low obscuration in the general direction of the galactic centre, wherein a stellar population assumed to be characteristic of the galactic bulge could be studied.

Improved solutions have been obtained for the orbit and equatorial cross-section of Mercury using radar ranging data spanning 22 years. These data have yielded new results on the precession of Mercury’s perihelion and better limits on a possible time variation in the gravitational constant G.

Individual pulses from a given pulsar can differ greatly in both shape and intensity, and are often made up of narrower ‘subpulses’, i.e. local emission peaks one tenth the width of the mean pulse. Properties such as shape, polarization and position of subpulses presumably reflect details of the emission processes and of the regions that produce the radiation.

The Parkes radio telescope has been used to search a list of small, dense southern dark clouds and Bok globules for ammonia emission at 23.7 GHz. The ammonia observations, together with IRAS data and the cloud’s visual appearance, have been used to determine a short list of dark clouds for observation with the infrared imaging system (IRIS) on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, in an attempt to determine the dust density distribution within the clouds. Near-infrared images of a number of the short listed clouds have been obtained with IRIS at J, H and K’. Preliminary results are reported for this ammonia survey, together with IRIS images of the strong ammonia source DC 297.7–2.8. Coincident with the dense ammonia core of this object is an IRAS ‘core’ source, IRAS 11590–6452 and an extremely interesting near-infrared source, which lies on the edge of the error ellipse of the IRAS source.

It has been accepted since the mid-1950’s that the LMC is a flat rotating body, with its plane inclined at an angle of about 27° to the line of sight and so nearly face on, and its line of nodes running 10° west of north (de Vaucouleurs and Freeman 1972). The inclination is inferred from the ellipticity of the outermost optical and radio isophotes but there has been no convincing way to fix its sense — whether the E or W side is nearer. Some years ago the late Dr David Thackeray suggested to one of us (SCBG) that this could be done by comparing the magnitudes of cepheids on the extreme E and W sides of the Cloud. With the discovery of the Magellanic Stream and the great increase of interest in the spatial geometry and dynamics of the Clouds and Galaxy complex, the sense of the tilt of the LMC has become a matter of importance, and we decided to go ahead with the project.

Evidence exists for mode energy changes in beat Cepheid variable stars over the 20-30 year interval during which photoelectric observations of the objects have been obtained. For TU Cas, Hodson, Stellingwerf and Cox (1979) have found that the first overtone amplitude has been decreasing with time from 0.4 to 0.25 mag over a 67 year timebase; these authors also included some early visual estimates in their analysis. For U TrA, Faulkner & Shobbrook (1979) have found that the first overtone pulsation has been increasing relative to the fundamental over a twenty year timebase.

The U.K. 1.2 metre Schmidt Telescope acquired its first full aperture objective prism in 1975. This was a very low dispersion prism (2400 Å/mm at 4300 Å) which has been found to be particularly useful in searching for faint QSO’s.

In this paper we model mathematically the propagation of galactic cosmic-rays in the solar cavity and study the effects of changing the physical parameters; in particular the radius of the cavity. We assume spherical symmetry with heliocentric distance r, momentum p and work in terms of F0(r, p) the mean distribution function with respect to momentum; it is related to JT the mean differential intensity w.r.t. energy by JT = p2F0 . The boundary is at r = rb beyond which the galactic spectrum prevails; there is free escape of particles incident on rb from within, and the distribution is steady state.

The effective Rayleigh number, in the solar convection zone, soon reaches a value of the order of 106 and, although considerable progress has been made in the numerical integration of the basic system of differential equations at high Rayleigh number, it is of interest to investigate more fully the application of asymptotic methods to such a problem.

Most of the galaxy redshifts currently available in the literature have been measured from photographic spectra and are generally based on subjective estimates of the position of the narrow absorption features. In using only the few prominent absorption lines, most of the light from the galaxy is discarded. With the advent of digital linear-response detectors it is possible to obtain accurate and objective redshifts by cross-correlating all or part of the galaxy spectrum with a template galaxy of known redshift (Tonry and Davis 1979, Kelton 1980 and references therein).

The deep interiors of cold, degenerate stars consist of a mixture of elements, either because of primordial inhomogeneities or because of incomplete nuclear burning. However, most existing calculations for the cooling of such bodies (subsequent to any nuclear burning) assume that the only source of luminosity is the heat content of the star. An additional (and potentially much larger) energy source is available if the elements have limited mutual solubility below some temperature. The resulting differentiation and gravitational settling can dramatically decrease the rate of cooling, enhance the number of (potentially) observable low luminosity bodies, and may deplete the atmosphere of heavy elements (if substantial mixing between the atmosphere and deep interior occurs). The observational evidence for these phenomena is equivocal at present.

We present changes in the periods of the double-mode beat cepheid star SX Phe from 1951 to 1987 deduced from observed times of maximum light.

The Buckland Park air shower array is being developed particularly for use as an ultra-high-energy gamma ray astronomy telescope. The properties of this instrument are described with an emphasis on improvements being made to its angular resolution. Some early data are presented to illustrate the way in which the data obtained will be used.