The Antennae galaxies are a spectacular example of a burst of star formation triggered by the encounter of two galaxies, being an ideal source to understand how the dynamics of galaxy mergers drives star formation. We present archive ALMA CO(3−2) and VLT near-IR H2 spectro-imaging observations, and new ALMA 13CO(2−1) and dust continuum observations, at ~50 pc resolution. Combining tracers of density and velocity structure of the gas and its energetics, we demonstrate that star formation involves a complex interplay of merger-driven gas dynamics and turbulence, and the dissipation of the gas kinetic energy. We focus on a compact, bright H2 source, associated with cold molecular gas and dust continuum emission, located where the velocity gradient in the interaction region is observed to be the largest. The characteristics of this source suggest that we are witnessing the formation, initiated by turbulent dissipation, of a cloud massive enough (~4×106M⊙) to form a super star cluster within 1 Myr.

NOTE. This chapter gives the membership of the “old” Commissions (listed by Commission number), as they were re-affiliated to the new Divisions that were established at the XXVIII GA in 2012. These Commissions ceased to exist at the XXIX GA and replaced by the new Commissions (se Chapter IX of these Transactions). The membership of the new Commissions was highly provisional and incomplete at the time of the XXIX GA (August 2015), therefore it is not reported here and it will be published in the next issue of the Transactions B.

Up to ages of ~ 100 Myr, massive clusters are still swamped in large amounts of gas and dust, with considerable and uneven levels of extinction. At the same time, large grains (ices?) produced by type II supernovae profoundly alter the interstellar medium (ISM), thus resulting in extinction properties very different from those of the diffuse ISM. To obtain physically meaningful parameters of stars, from basic luminosities and effective temperatures to masses and ages, we must understand and measure the local extinction law. This problem affects all the massive young clusters discussed in his volume.

The Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS) has obtained slitless near-infrared spectroscopy of 10 galaxy clusters selected for their strong lensing properties, including all six Hubble Frontier Fields. Slitless grism spectra are ideal for mapping emission lines such as [O ii], [O iii], and Hα at z=1–3. The combination of strong gravitational lensing and Hubble's diffraction limit provides excellent sensitivity with spatial resolution as fine as 100 pc for highly magnified sources, and ~500 pc for less magnified sources near the edge of the field of view. The GLASS survey represents the largest spectroscopic sample with such high resolution at z > 1. GLASS and Hubble Frontier Field data provide the distribution of stellar mass, star formation, gas-phase metallicity, and other aspects of the physical structure of high redshift galaxies, reaching stellar masses as low as ~107 M⊙ at z=2. I discuss precise measurements of these physical properties and implications for galaxy evolution.

The evolved, core helium burning, extreme horizontal branch stars (also known as hot B subdwarfs) host several classes of pulsators showing either p- or g-modes, or both. They offer particularly favorable conditions for probing with asteroseismology their internal structure, thus constituting arguably the most interesting seismic window for this intermediate stage of stellar evolution. G-modes in particular have the power to probe deep inside these stars, down to the convective He-burning core boundary where uncertain physics (convection, overshooting, semi-convection) is at work. Space data recently obtained with CoRoT and Kepler are offering us the possibility to probe these regions in detail and possibly shed new light on how these processes shape the core structure. In this short paper, we present the most recent advances that have taken place in this field and we provide hints of the foreseen future achievements of hot subdwarf asteroseismology.

We propose to use a deterministically-driven class of self-organized criticality sandpile models to carry out predictions of the largest, most dangerous, and hardest to predict solar flares.

Chandra has deeply observed the clusters and parallel fields in four Frontier Fields. These observations allow us to dramatically improve our understanding of cluster mergers by comparing the detailed mapping of the hot cluster gas with high resolution mass maps and by identifying merger shocks and cold fronts. In merging clusters, relativistic particles can be re-accelerated to produce radio relics. A comparison of lensing maps and Chandra images allows us to determine the cluster morphology and dynamical state and if there are offsets between the dark matter and the hot gas.

The study of active asteroids has attracted a great deal of interest in recent years since the recognition of main-belt comets (which orbit in the main asteroid belt, but exhibit comet-like activity due to the sublimation of volatile ices) as a new class of comets in 2006, and the discovery of the first disrupted asteroids (which, unlike MBCs, exhibit comet-like activity due to a physical disruption such as an impact or rotational destabilization, not sublimation) in 2010. In this paper, I will briefly discuss key areas of interest in the study of active asteroids.

We show data from the SCUBA2 camera on JCMT, of molecular clouds. We focus on starless cores within the clouds. We present data of the Taurus region and show how the environment is affecting some cores' appearance in this region. We compare the SCUBA2 data with Herschel data and discuss the sensitivity of SCUBA2 to surface brightness in the sub-millimetre. We show how this leads to its ability to pick out the densest cores at a given temperature. Hence SCUBA2 preferentially picks out gravitationally bound pre-stellar cores. We discuss the effects of the magnetic field, and how this lends support to a model for the formation and evolution of cores in filamentary molecular clouds.

Gaia's Radial Velocity Spectrometer (RVS) has been operating in routine phase for over one year since initial commissioning. RVS continues to work well but the higher than expected levels of straylight reduce the limiting magnitude. The end-of-mission radial-velocity (RV) performance requirement for G2V stars was 15 km s−1 at V = 16.5 mag. Instead, 15 km s−1 precision is achieved at 15 < V < 16 mag, consistent with simulations that predict a loss of 1.4 mag. Simulations also suggest that changes to Gaia's onboard software could recover ~0.14 mag of this loss. Consequently Gaia's onboard software was upgraded in April 2015. The status of this new commissioning period is presented, as well as the latest scientific performance of the on-ground processing of RVS spectra. We illustrate the implications of the RVS limiting magnitude on Gaia's view of the Milky Way's halo in 6D using the Gaia Universe Model Snapshot (GUMS).

We investigate why hydrodynamical numerical simulations have difficulties (Weinmann et al. 2011) in reproducing the Main Sequence (MS) of star-forming galaxies, i.e. the fact that galaxies forming stars lie on a tight power law sequence in the stellar mass (M*), star formation rate (SFR) plane (Schreiber et al. 2015). Instead of trying to improve the agreement of simulations with the observations by modifying the subgrid recipes of baryons, we take here a step back to check whether the accretion onto dark matter halos is consistent with the existence of the main sequence of star forming galaxies.

We present results on the stellar populations of bulge-dominated field galaxies at redshifts up to ≈1.0. The sample consists of non-cluster galaxies observed as part of the spectroscopic observations for the Gemini/HST Galaxy Cluster Project (GCP). Our preliminary results show that the bulge-dominated field galaxies contain younger stellar populations than cluster galaxies at similar redshifts. Future work will include photometry from Hubble Space Telescope and will be aimed at establishing the evolution of the sizes and the mass-to-light ratios for the field galaxies.

Strong gravitational magnification in the core of lensing clusters allows to probe the faint-end of the galaxy luminosity function up to very high redshift. In particular, the Frontier Fields have allowed us to identify a large number of faint dropouts and constrain the Lyman-break luminosity function at z~5-7. I present here the results of an ongoing program with MUSE, a new integral field spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope having a large field of view (1 arcmin2), to confirm these candidate high redshift dropouts through Lyman-α emission and identify additional emitters with high equivalent width, fainter than the depth of the Frontier Fields Hubble images. Combined with similar deep exposures taken with MUSE in blank fields, this gives us the best opportunity to probe the Lyman-α luminosity function over a wide range in luminosity.

Measuring the obliquities of exoplanet-host stars provides invaluable diagnostic information for theories of planetary formation and migration. Most of these results have so far been obtained by measuring the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect, clearly favoring systems that harbor hot Jupiters. While it would be extremely helpful to extend these measurements to long-period and multiple-planet systems, it is also true that the latter systems tend to involve smaller planets, making it ever so difficult to apply such techniques. Asteroseismology provides a powerful method of determining the inclination of the stellar spin axis — from an analysis of the rotationally-induced splittings of the oscillation modes — whose applicability is ultimately determined by the stellar parameters and not by the signal-to-noise ratio of the transit data. Here we present the first statistical analysis of an ensemble of asteroseismic obliquity measurements obtained for solar-type stars with transiting planets. The sample consists of 25 Kepler planet-candidate host stars, 14 of which are multi-transiting systems. We seek empirical constraints on the spin-orbit alignment of exoplanet systems and discuss the implications for theories of planetary formation and migration.

Very recently, a number of obscured massive open clusters have been identified in the Milky Way. A very significant fraction of them lie either close to the base of the Scutum Arm or towards Galactic longitude of 350°. We are studying these clusters and their neighbourhoods, finding very good evidence for a major starburst region close to the near tip of the Galactic Long Bar.

We study star formation occurring in nuclear rings of barred-spiral galaxies by using hydrodynamic simulations with the prescriptions of star formation and feedback included. In models without spiral arms, the star formation rate (SFR) in a ring exhibits a strong primary burst at early time and declines to small values at late time. The early burst is caused by a rapid gas infall due to the bar growth, consuming most of the gas inside the bar regions. On the other hand, models with spiral arms show multiple starburst activities at late time caused by arm-induced gas inflows, provided that the arm pattern speed is slower than that of the bar. The SFR in models with spirals is larger by a factor of ~ 1.4–4.0 than that in the bar-only models, with larger values corresponding to stronger and slower arms. In all models, young star clusters in nuclear ring show an azimuthal age gradient only when the SFR is small, such that younger clusters tend to locate closer to the contact points between the ring and dust lanes.

We use a dynamical model for the decay of supermassive black hole binaries (BHBs) coupled with a cosmological simulation and semi-empirical approaches to the occupation of halos by galaxies and BHs, in order to investigate the properties of galaxies hosting BHBs. We found bimodal distributions of hosts properties, with one peak corresponding to BHBs suitable to be detected by PTAs and the other to BHBs in the eLISA frequency window. We note that for some of the scenarios explored there must be a considerable population of such sources in the nearby Universe that might show detectable EM signatures, representing an important laboratory for multimessenger astrophysics.

Understanding the production of ionising photons in galaxies, how these photons propagate, ionise and heat the interstellar medium and possibly leak out of their host galaxies is key to understand many aspects of galaxy evolution and their contribution to reionisation. I will outline some projects currently undertaken to investigate the ionising photon budget.

Coronal quasi-periodic fast-propagating (QFP) magnetosonic waves are scare in previous studies due to the relative low temporal and spatial resolution of past telescopes. Recently, they are detected by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Here, two cases of QFP waves are presented. The analysis results indicate that QFP waves are tightly associated with the associated flares. It is indicate that QFP waves and the associated flares are possibly driven by the same physic process such as quasi-periodic magnetic reconnection process in producing flares.

The Planck satellite has mapped the polarized microwave sky (from 30 GHz to 353 GHz) with unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution. This wealth of data yields the first complete map of polarized thermal emission from dust in our own Galaxy, shedding new light on the formation of dense cold structures within which new stars and planetary systems are born, under the combined effects of gravity, turbulence and magnetic fields. We present a statistical analysis of this polarized emission from nearby molecular clouds, with an emphasis on the evolution of the maximum polarization fraction observed as a function of column density, and on the anti-correlation between the polarization fraction and the local dispersion of polarization angles. To interpret this data, numerical simulations of anisotropic MHD turbulence underline the essential role played by the topology of the interstellar magnetic field, in particular its large-scale component. Indeed, the polarization of dust thermal emission at the scales observed by Planck is essentially related to the geometry of the magnetic field. Polarization fractions anti-correlate with column densities, which may be due to a succession of variously polarized structures on the line of sight. They also anti-correlate with the local dispersion of polarization angles. These features are well reproduced by MHD simulations of the diffuse ISM, with comparable correlation coefficients. As an extension to this work published in Planck Intermediate Results XX (A&A, 576, 105, 2015), the statistical properties of the random component of the interstellar magnetic field are explored using a toy model of the turbulent magnetized ISM based on fractional Brownian motion (fBm) fields. A least-squares analysis to retrieve the statistical properties of the interstellar magnetic field from Planck observations is pursued. Application of this method on the toy model shows good promise, and we are currently working towards its application on Planck data.