We investigate clustering properties of quasars using a new version of our semi-analytic model of galaxy and quasar formation with state-of-the-art cosmological N-body simulations (Ishiyama et al. 2015; Oogi et al. 2015). We assume that a major merger of galaxies triggers quasar activity. We find that the quasar bias does not depend significantly on the quasar luminosity, similar to observed trends. This result reflects the fact that quasars with a fixed luminosity have various Eddington ratios and thus have various host halo masses that primarily determine the quasar bias. The quasar bias increases with redshift, which is in qualitative agreement with observations. Our bias value is lower than the observed values at high redshifts, implying that we need some mechanisms that make quasars inactive in low-mass haloes and/or that make them more active in high-mass haloes.

The sky is full of variable and transient sources on all time scales, from milliseconds to decades. Planck's regular scanning strategy makes it an ideal instrument to search for variable sky signals in the millimetre and submillimetre regime, on time scales from hours to several years. A precondition is that instrumental noise and systematic effects, caused in particular by non-symmetric beam shapes, are properly removed. We present a method to perform a full sky blind search for variable and transient objects at all Planck frequencies.

Recent studies of planetary nebulae and deep color-magnitude diagrams in M 31 have unveiled some unusual star-formation events beyond its spiral arms into its outer regions extending to 100 kpc in projected distance. In this paper I summarize these observations. I shall also highlight some special interpretive surprises suggested by observations of PNe related to their O/H abundances, ages, and the luminosities on PNe well beyond the inner disk.

Observations of flare emissions in the optical continuum are very rare. Therefore, the analysis of such observations is useful and may contribute to our understanding of the flaring chromosphere and photosphere. We study the white light continuum emission observed during the X6.9 flare. This emission comes not only from the flare ribbons but also form the nearby plage area. The main aim of this work is to disentangle the flare and plage (facula) emission. We analyzed the spatial, spectral and temporal evolution of the flare and plage properties by analyzing multi-wavelength observations. We study the morphological correlation of the white-light continuum emission observed with different instruments. We found that some active region areas which produce the continuum emission correspond rather to plages than to the flare kernels. We showed that in some cases the continuum emission from the WL flare kernels is very similar to the continuum emission of faculae.

Atomic hydrogen traces the raw material from which molecular clouds and stars form. With 565 galaxies from the ALFALFA Hα survey, a statistically complete subset of the ALFALFA survey, we examine the processes that affect galaxies' abilities to access and consume their Hi gas. On galaxy-wide scales, Hi gas fractions correlate only weakly with instantaneous specific star formation rates (sSFRs) but tightly with galaxy color. We show that a connection between dust and Hi content, arising from the fundamental mass-metallicity-Hi relation, leads to this tight color correlation. We find that disk galaxies follow a relation between stellar surface density and Hi depletion time, consistent with a scenario in which higher mid-plane pressure leads to more efficient molecular cloud formation from Hi. In contrast, spheroids show no such trend. Starbursts, identified by Hα equivalent width, do not show enhanced Hi gas fractions relative to similar mass non-starburst galaxies. The starbursts' shorter Hi depletion times indicate more efficient consumption of Hi, and galaxy interactions drive this enhanced star formation efficiency in several starbursts. Interestingly, the most disturbed starbursts show greater enhancements in Hi gas fraction, which may indicate an excess of Hi at early merger stages. At low galaxy stellar masses, the triggering mechanism for starbursts is less clear; the high scatter in efficiency and sSFR among low-mass galaxies may result from periodic bursts. We find no evidence for depleted Hi reservoirs in starbursts, which suggests that galaxies may maintain sufficient Hi to fuel multiple starburst episodes.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) was used to obtain measurements of spatially and spectrally resolved CH3OH emission from comet C/2012 K1 (PanSTARRS) on 28-29 June 2014. Detection of 12-14 emission lines of CH3OH on each day permitted the derivation of spatially-resolved rotational temperature profiles (averaged along the line of sight), for the innermost 5000 km of the coma. On each day, the CH3OH distribution was centrally peaked and approximately consistent with spherically symmetric, uniform outflow. The azimuthally-averaged CH3OH rotational temperature (T rot) as a function of sky-projected nucleocentric distance (ρ), fell by about 40 K between ρ= 0 and 2500 km on 28 June, whereas on 29 June, T rot fell by about 50 K between ρ =0 km and 1500 km. A remarkable (~50 K) rise in T rot at ρ = 1500-2500 km on 29 June was not present on 28 June. The observed variations in CH3OH rotational temperature are interpreted primarily as a result of variations in the coma kinetic temperature due to adiabatic cooling, and heating through Solar irradiation, but collisional and radiative non-LTE excitation processes also play a role.

The Lyman-α (Lyα) Solar Telescope (LST) is one of the payloads for the proposed Space-Borne Advanced Solar Observatory (ASO-S). LST consists of a Solar Disk Imager (SDI) with a field-of-view (FOV) of 1.2 R⊙ (R⊙ = solar radius), a Solar Corona Imager (SCI) with an FOV of 1.1 - 2.5 R⊙, and a full-disk White-light Solar Telescope (WST) with the same FOV as the SDI, which also serves as the guiding telescope. The SCI is designed to work in the Lyα (121.6 nm) waveband and white-light (for polarization brightness observation), while the SDI will work in the Lyα waveband only. The WST works in both visible (for guide) and ultraviolet (for science) broadband. The LST will observe the Sun from disk-center up to 2.5 R⊙ for both solar flares and coronal mass ejections with high tempo-spatial resolution

The all-sky Planck catalogue of Galactic Cold Clumps (PGCC) allows an almost unbiased study of the early phases of star-formation in our Galaxy. Several thousand of the clumps have also distance estimates allowing a determination of mass and density. The nature of Planck cold clumps varies from IRDCs to tiny nearby cold clouds with masses ranging from one to several tens of thousands solar masses. Some of the clumps are embedded in GMCs, others are isolated. Some are close or even very close to OB associations, while others lay far from any UV luminous objects. The small scale clustering of nearby PGCCs was studied with the improved Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) method identifying groups in 3D space, locating also massive cold cloud clusters eg. PGCCMST G210.6-19.5 in LDN 1641.

The presence of compact obscured nuclei in luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) is very well probed by the detection of highly excited absorption lines of OH and H2O in the far-infrared (far-IR), which require warm and optically thick dust to pump the high-lying rotational levels. We are using a spherically symmetric radiative transfer code to model the H2O lines, OH lines and continuum from these objects. We discuss the results and analysis of Herschel observations of the compact obscured nucleus in the extremely H2O luminous LIRG Zw 049.057. In this galaxy we have found very high H2O abundances in a Compton thick compact core. Abundant 18O bearing species also suggest the presence of a relatively young starburst. We compare this to our observations and modeling of the luminous merger component Arp 299a, which is another source with prominent H2O and OH lines. Our preliminary results, however, suggest that its nuclear activity is in a different evolutionary state compared to Zw 049.057.

The material used to form the CEMP-no stars presents signatures of processing by the CNO cycle and by He-burning from a previous stellar generation called spinstars. We compare the composition of the ejecta (wind + supernova) of a spinstar model to observed abundances of CEMP-no stars. We show that observed abundances as well as the isotope ratio 12C/13C may be reproduced by the spinstar ejecta if we assume different mass cuts when adding the supernova material to the wind ejecta.

On scales of ≳ several hundred parsec, there are relatively well defined observed relations between the star formation rate surface density of a galaxy and its gas content. I present a short summary of the so-called ‘star formation laws’ and discuss the most established models to explain their origin. Nevertheless, none of the models can explain the offset of these relations, which requires a low star formation efficiency within the total and/or molecular gas. Stellar feedback is proposed to limit the star formation efficiency locally. I discuss the available feedback mechanisms and show recent simulation results on the evolution of the multi-phase interstellar medium under the influence of gravity, cooling, feedback-driven outflows and heating.

The study of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) is a young and promising field of research. If IMBH exist, they could explain the rapid growth of supermassive black holes by acting as seeds in the early stage of galaxy formation. Formed by runaway collisions of massive stars in young and dense stellar clusters, intermediate-mass black holes could still be present in the centers of globular clusters, today. We measured the inner kinematic profiles with integral-field spectroscopy for 10 Galactic globular cluster and determined masses or upper limits of central black holes. In combination with literature data we further studied the positions of our results on known black-hole scaling relations (such as M • − σ) and found a similar but flatter correlation for IMBHs. Applying cluster evolution codes, the change in the slope could be explained with the stellar mass loss occurring in clusters in a tidal field over its life time. Furthermore, we present results from several numerical simulations on the topic of IMBHs and integral field units (IFUs). N-body simulations were used to simulate IFU data cubes. For the specific case of NGC 6388 we simulated two different IFU techniques and found that velocity dispersion measurements from individual velocities are strongly biased towards lower values due to blends of neighbouring stars and background light. In addition, we use the Astrophysical Multipurpose Software Environment (AMUSE) to combine gravitational physics, stellar evolution and hydrodynamics to simulate the accretion of stellar winds onto a black hole. We find that the S-stars need to provide very strong winds in order to explain the accretion rate in the galactic center.

Water ice is the dominant constituent of icy grain mantles in the interstellar medium, and as such one of the most abundant species during all stages of star and planet formation. Its formation through atom addition reactions on grain surfaces, its destruction through different desorption channels, and its influence on the chemistry and desorption efficiencies of other species in icy grain mantles have all been the objects of intense study. This contribution reviews our current understanding of these processes, and the laboratory experiments that have been instrumental in establishing the existing paradigm.

We propose a new astrophysical test on the nature of dark matter based on the properties of dark halos associated with dwarf spheroidal galaxies. The method adopts a mean surface density of a dark halo defined within a radius of maximum circular velocity, which is derivable for a wide variety of galaxies with any dark-matter density profiles. We find that even though dark halo density profiles are derived based on the different assumptions for each galaxy sample, this surface density is generally constant across a wide mass range of galaxy. We find that at higher halo-mass scales, this constancy for real galaxies can be naturally reproduced by both cold and warm dark matter (CDM and WDM) models. However, at low-mass scales, for which we have estimated from the Milky Way and Andromeda dwarf satellites, the mean surface density derived from WDM models largely deviates from the observed constancy, whereas CDM models are in reasonable agreement with observations.

Sensitive, high resolution observations of Galactic neutral hydrogen (Hi) reveal an intricate network of slender linear features, much as sensitive surveys of dust in Galactic molecular clouds reveal ubiquitous filamentary structure. Across the high Galactic latitude sky, diffuse Histructures are aligned with the interstellar magnetic field, as revealed by background starlight polarization (Clark, Peek, & Putman 2014) and by Planck 353 GHz polarized dust emission (Clark et al. 2015). These discoveries were enabled by the Rolling Hough Transform, a recently developed, open source machine vision algorithm.

The members of the Resolutions Committee for the 2012-2015 triennium were:

• Ian Corbett (UK; Chair)

• Bruce Elmegreen (USA)

• Renée Kraan-Korteweg (South Africa)

• Yanchun Liang (China Nanjing)

• Karel van der Hucht (Netherlands)

The incoming IAU President, Silvia Torres-Peimbert, welcomed the participants to the Closing Ceremony of the XXIXth General Assembly.

Supporting the use of astronomy as a tool for development in specific regions and languages, the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD) has established a Portuguese ‘Language Expertise Centre for the OAD’ (PLOAD), hosted at Núcleo Interactivo de Astronomia (NUCLIO), in collaboration with the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) in Portugal. The centre is one of the new coordinating offices announced at the IAU General Assembly in Honolulu, Hawaii on 13 August 2015.

In the central regions of active galaxies, dense molecular medium are exposed to various types of radiation and energy injections, such as UV, X-ray, cosmic ray, and shock dissipation. With the rapid progress of chemical models and implementation of new-generation mm/submm interferometry, we are now able to use molecules as powerful diagnostics of the physical and chemical processes in galaxies. Here we give a brief overview on the recent ALMA results to demonstrate how molecules can reveal underlying physical and chemical processes in galaxies. First, new detections of Galactic molecular absorption systems with elevated HCO/H13CO+ column density ratios are reported, indicating that these molecular media are irradiated by intense UV fields. Second, we discuss the spatial distributions of various types of shock tracers including HNCO, CH3OH and SiO in NGC 253 and NGC 1068. Lastly, we provide an overview of proposed diagnostic methods of nuclear energy sources using ALMA, with an emphasis on the synergy with sensitive mid-infrared spectroscopy, which will be implemented by JWST and SPICA to disentangle the complex nature of heavily obscured galaxies across the cosmic time.

The stellar phase of Thermally-Pulsating Asymptotic giant branch is the last major evolutionary stage of intermediate-mass stars which afterwards evolve into planetary nebulae. The TP-AGB phase is affected by mass-loss and instabilities which notoriously make its theoretical modelling uncertain. This review focuses on the effects such modelling has on stellar population models for galaxies, with particular focus on the high-z Universe where galaxies are young and contain a large number of short-living TP-AGB stars. I shall present the models, discuss how different prescriptions for the treatment of the TP-AGB affect the theoretical integrated spectral energy distribution and how these compare to galaxy data, and discuss implications for the PN nebulae luminosity function stemming from the various assumptions. Finally I shall discuss the inclusion of hot evolved stars on stellar population models and how they compare to data for old galaxies at our present time.