We summarize measurements of improved wavelengths of Fe V and Ni V in the vacuum ultraviolet.

The International Astronomical Union's Commission 51 was established in 1982 as\break “Bioastronomy: Search for Extraterrestrial Life”. As the interests of Commission members expanded to include all aspects of the study of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe, C51 was renamed simply “Bioastronomy” in 2006. Thus, the term “bioastronomy” became for the Commission essentially synonymous with the NASA-coined term “astrobiology“. Since the latter term has been adopted by many scientific societies around the world with similar interests, under the new Division and Commission structure of the IAU the Commission has been again renamed and is now Commission F-3 “Astrobiology”.

The Andean Regional Office of Astronomy for Development (ROAD) is a new effort in South America to serve several goals in astronomical development. The six countries in the Andean ROAD (Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela) represent a common language block in the region. They work together to develop strategies to strengthen the professional research, education and popularization of astronomy. Our current Working Structure comprises a ROAD Coordinator and one Coordinators in each Task Force. Here we describe the main points of the ROAD's current action plan.

Stellar flares are known to originate from magnetic reconnection in the atmospheres of late–type stars or through radiatively driven wind instabilities in early–type stars. Situated right between these two groups, the A–type stars are not expected to support either of the two mechanisms. However, recent studies report flare features in the Kepler light curves of 32 A–type stars, contradicting theory. We investigate the stars reported in literature, setting strong constraints on the detection criteria. Although significantly fewer, we conclude that flare-like features are present. To determine the origin we obtained high-resolution spectra from the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) for the ten brightest, flaring A-type stars for 3-4 epochs. Here we present the preliminary results of these spectroscopic observations, with respect to spectral classification and binarity.

Dust-Obscured galaxies (DOGs, Dey et al. 2008) are bright 24μm-selected sources with extreme obscuration at optical wavelengths (F24μ m /FR > 982). Recent studies (Dey et al. 2008, Bussmann et al. 2009) describe an evolutionary scenario in which the starbursting nature of submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) evolves into the composite nature of DOGs as an underlying AGN grows; this is followed by a quasar phase that terminates star formation (SF), leading to the formation of a passive, massive elliptical galaxy. Within this context, DOGs could provide a key insight to an extremely dusty stage in the evolution of galaxies at z ~ 2, where both AGN and SF activity coexist.

A 3-day Focus Meeting entitled “Stellar Physics in Galaxies throughout the Universe” was held during the IAU XXIX General Assembly. The meeting brought together astrophysicists from the stellar physics, extragalactic astrophysics and cosmology communities to discuss how current and future results can foster progress in these disjoint science areas. Areas covered include stellar evolution of single and binary stars from the zero-age main-sequence to the terminal stage, the feedback of stars to the interstellar medium via radiation, dust production and chemical enrichment, and the properties of the most massive stars and of cosmologically significant stellar phases such as AGB and Wolf-Rayet stars. The limitations of our understanding of the physics of local stars and their effects on, e.g., ages, chemical composition and the initial mass function of galaxies at low to high redshift were evaluated.

Space Awareness (EUSPACE-AWE) will use the excitement of space to attract young people into science and technology and stimulate European and global citizenship. Our main goal is to increase the number of young people that choose space-related careers.

We present results from our investigation of galaxy evolution in dense cluster environments up to redshift z=1.3 based on high S/N ground-based spectroscopy and HST imaging of bulge-dominated galaxies: (1) An analysis of sizes, M/L ratios and line indices of galaxies in massive clusters out to z=1.3. The results are published in Jørgensen & Chiboucas (2013) and Jørgensen et al. (2014). (2) A preliminary analysis (Fig. 1) of absorption line indices, ages, metallicities and abundance ratios for galaxies in nine massive clusters out to z=0.9. New data cover three clusters at z=0.2-0.5.

We have recently computed a grid of 3D radiation-hydrodynamical simulations for the atmosphere of pure-hydrogen DA white dwarfs in the range 5.0 < log g < 9.0. Our grid covers the full ZZ Ceti instability strip where pulsating DA white dwarfs are located. We have significantly improved the theoretical framework to study these objects by removing the free parameters of 1D convection, which were previously a major modeling hurdle. We present improved atmospheric parameter determinations based on spectroscopic fits with 3D model spectra, allowing for an updated definition of the empirical edges of the ZZ Ceti instability strip. Our 3D simulations also precisely predict the depth of the convection zones, narrowing down the internal layers where pulsation are being driven. We hope that these 3D effects will be included in asteroseismic models in the future to predict the region of the HR diagram where white dwarfs are expected to pulsate.

A gas-grain time dependent chemical code, UCL_CHEM, has been used to investigate the possibility of using chemical tracers to differentiate between the possible formation mechanisms of brown dwarfs. We model the formation of a pre-brown dwarf core through turbulent fragmentation by following the depth-dependent chemistry in a molecular cloud through the step change in density associated with an isothermal shock and the subsequent freefall collapse once a bound core is produced. Trends in the fractional abundance of molecules commonly observed in star forming cores are then explored to find a diagnostic for identifying brown dwarf mass cores formed through turbulence. We find that the cores produced by our models would be bright in CO and NH3 but not in HCO+. This differentiates them from models using purely freefall collapse as such models produce cores that would have detectable transitions from all three molecules.

In this work, we present a set of M-type star candidates selected from the LAMOST DR1. A discrimination method with the spectral index diagram is used to separate M giants and M dwarfs. Then, we have successfully assembled a set of M giants templates from M0 to M6, using the spectra identified from the LAMOST spectral database. After combining the M dwarf templates in Zhong et al. (2015a) and the new created M giant templates, we use the M-type spectral library to perform the template-fit method to classify and identify M-type stars in the LAMOST DR1. A catalog of M-type star candidates including 8639 M giants and 101690 M dwarfs/subdwarfs is provided. As an additional results, we also present other fundamental parameters like proper motion, photometry, radial velocity and spectroscopic distance.

The rotation rates in the interior and at the surface is determined for the 22 main-sequence stars with masses between 1.0 and 1.6 M⊙. The average interior rotation is measured using asteroseismology, while the surface rotation is measured by the spectroscopic v sin i or the periodic light variation due to surface structures, such as spots. It is found that the difference between the surface rotation rate determined by spectroscopy and the average rotation rate for most of stars is small enough to suggest that an efficient process of angular momentum transport operates during and/or before the main-sequence stage of stars. By comparing the surface rotation rate measured from the light variation with those measured by spectroscopy, we found hints of latitudinal differential rotation. However, this must be confirmed by a further study because our result is sensitive to a few data points.

I discuss stellar populations in galaxies at high redshift (z > 6), in particular the blue rest-frame UV colours which have been detected in recent years through near-IR imaging with HST. These spectral slopes of β < −2 are much more blue than star-forming galaxies at lower redshift, and may suggest less dust obscuration, lower metallicity or perhaps a different initial mass function. I describe current work on the luminosity function of high redshift star- forming galaxies, the evolution of the fraction of strong Lyman-α emitters in this population, and the contribution of the ionizing photon budget from such galaxies towards the reionization of the Universe. I also describe constraints placed by Spitzer/IRAC on stellar populations in galaxies within the first billion years, and look towards future developments in spectroscopy with Extremely Large Telescopes and the James Webb Space Telescope, including the JWST/NIRSpec GTO programme on galaxy evolution at high redshift.

The President of the IAU, Prof. Norio Kaifu, welcomed the delegates and members to this first business session of the General Assembly. The President invited the General Secretary, Dr. Thierry Montmerle, to start the business session.

Recent Fabry-Pérot observations towards the galaxy NGC 1325 with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) led to the serendipitous discovery of an emission feature centered at 661.3 nm arising from material in the interstellar medium (ISM) of our Galaxy; this emission feature lies at the wavelength of one of the sharper and stronger diffuse bands normally seen in absorption. The flux of the feature is 4.2 ± 0.5 × 10−18 es−1 cm−2 arcsec−2. It appears that this is the first observation of emission from a diffuse band carrier in the ISM, excited in this case by the interstellar radiation field. We present the discovery spectra and describe follow-up measurements proposed for SALT.

We look at the icy moons in our outer solar system in which we find organics and the possibility for habitabile conditions therein.

This work sketches how SDSS ugr colors and Kepler 2 in halo fields can identify red giants 50–100 kpc distant with minimal metallicity bias. For these mildly-reddened, metal-poor giants, (g-r)o yields the effective temperature T eff to 100 K. K2 can detect the p-mode oscillations of red giants and measure their frequency of maximum power νmax. This sets the luminosity L bol and thus the distance, plus an estimate of metallicity [Fe/H].

We investigate the formation of stellar clusters from a Galactic scale SPH simulation. The simulation traces star formation over a 5.6 Myr timescale, with local gravitational instabilities resulting in ~ 105 solar masses of star formation in the form of sink particles. We investigate the time evolution of the physical properties of the forming clusters including their half-mass radii, their energies and the depletion time of the gas. Star formation is driven by the large scale flows which compress the gas to higher densities where self gravity takes over and collapse occurs. We show that the more massive clusters (up to ~ 2 × 104 solar masses) gather their material from of order 10 pc due to these large scale motions associated with the spiral arm passage and shock. The bulk of the gas becomes gravitationally bound near 1-2 Myr before sink formation, and in the absence of feedback, significant accretion ongoing on longer timescales. We trace the hierarchical merging process of cluster formation which naturally results in age spreads of order the crossing time of the original region which provides the gas reservoir for the cluster.

In order to mark a distinction with the traditional triennial reports, for this legacy issue we have asked our present and past OC members, as well as a few other outstanding members of the Celestial Mechanics community, to write a short essay on “recent highlights and the future of Celestial Mechanics”. Below we collect the contributions of the people who responded to our invitation. As it is natural, each of them interpreted their task differently. Some produced a dissertation on broad and general aspects, others focused on a specific topic of their interest. Some considered that their role was to provide a detailed review, with a list of key references, others preferred to mention the topics for which progress has been significant but without quoting any references, implicitly considering that this progress was possible thanks to the collective efforts of many scientists, and not just a few. This is great, as we appreciate the diversity of attitudes and opinions.

We have combined the performances of the VLT/MUSE spectrograph together with the power of gravitational lensing by Frontier Fields galaxy clusters to offer a unique magnified view of the distant universe. The large field of view over a wide optical wavelength domain enables redshift measurements of numerous lensed galaxies in the cluster core. Spectroscopically-confirmed multiple-imaged systems are further used as strong constraints to improve the cluster mass model. Here, we focus on the galaxy cluster MACSJ0416.1-2403 and compare the revised magnification map with results from previous analysis.