The chemical evolution of the Universe is governed by the chemical yields from stars, which in turn are determined primarily by the initial stellar mass. Even stars as low as 0.9 M⊙ can, at low metallicity, contribute to the chemical evolution of elements. Stars less massive than about 10 M⊙ experience recurrent mixing events that can significantly change the surface composition of the envelope, with observed enrichments in carbon, nitrogen, fluorine, and heavy elements synthesized by the slow neutron capture process (the s-process). Low- and intermediate-mass stars release their nucleosynthesis products through stellar outflows or winds, in contrast to massive stars that explode as core-collapse supernovae. Here we review the stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis for single stars up to ~ 10 M⊙ from the main sequence through to the tip of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB). We include a discussion of the main uncertainties that affect theoretical calculations and review the latest observational data, which are used to constrain uncertain details of the stellar models. We finish with a review of the stellar yields available for stars less massive than about 10 M⊙ and discuss efforts by various groups to address these issues and provide homogeneous yields for low- and intermediate-mass stars covering a broad range of metallicities.

We investigate the optimal tradeoff between sensitivity and field of view in surveys for slow radio transients using the event detection rate as the survey metric. This tradeoff bears implications for the design of surveys conducted with upcoming widefield radio interferometers, such as the ASKAP VAST survey and the MeerKAT TRAPUM survey. We investigate (i) a survey in which the events are distributed homogeneously throughout a volume centred on the Earth, (ii) a survey in which the events are homogeneously distributed, but are only detectable beyond a certain minimum distance, and (iii) a survey in which all the events occur at an identical distance, as is appropriate for a targetted survey of a particular field which subtends N point telescope pointings. For a survey of fixed duration, T obs, we determine the optimal tradeoff between number of telescope pointings, N, and integration time per field. We consider a population in which the event luminosity distribution follows a power law with index − α, and t slew is the slewing time between fields or, for a drift scan, the time taken for the telescope drift by one beamwidth. Several orders of magnitude improvement in detection rate is possible by optimization of the survey parameters. The optimal value of N for case (i) is N max ~ T obs/4t slew, while for case (iii) we find N max = (L max/L 0)2[(3 − α)/2]2/(α − 1), where L max is the maximum luminosity of a transient event and L 0 is the minimum luminosity event detectable in an integration of duration T obs. (The instance N max > N point in (iii) implies re-observation of fields over the survey area, except when the duration of transient events exceeds that between re-observations of the same field, where N max = N point applies instead.) We consider the balance in survey optimization between telescope field of view, Ω, and sensitivity, characterised by the minimum detectable flux density, S 0. For homogeneously distributed events (i), the detection rate scales as NΩS −3/2 0, while for targetted events (iii) it scales as NΩS 1 − α 0. However, if the targetted survey is optimised for N the event detection rate scales instead as ΩS −2 0. This analysis bears implications for the assessment of telescope designs: the quantity ΩS −2 0 is often used as the metric of telescope performance in the SKA transients literature, but only under special circumstances is it the metric that optimises the event detection rate.

A multipath mechanism similar to that used in Australia sixty years ago by the Sea-cliff Interferometer is shown to generate correlations between the periods of oscillations observed by two distant radio telescopes pointed to the Sun. The oscillations are the result of interferences between the direct wave detected in the main antenna lobe and its reflection on ground detected in a side lobe. A model is made of such oscillations in the case of two observatories located at equal longitudes and opposite tropical latitudes, respectively in Ha Noi (Viet Nam) and Learmonth (Australia), where similar radio telescopes are operated at 1.4 GHz. Simple specular reflection from ground is found to give a good description of the observed oscillations and to explain correlations that had been previously observed and for which no satisfactory interpretation, instrumental or other, had been found.

We present two absolute magnitude calibrations for dwarfs based on colour–magnitude diagrams of Galactic clusters. The combination of the Mg absolute magnitudes of the dwarf fiducial sequences of the clusters M92, M13, M5, NGC 2420, M67, and NGC 6791 with the corresponding metallicities provides absolute magnitude calibration for a given (g − r)0 colour. The calibration is defined in the colour interval 0.25 ≤ (g − r)0 ≤ 1.25 mag and it covers the metallicity interval − 2.15 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ +0.37 dex. The absolute magnitude residuals obtained by the application of the procedure to another set of Galactic clusters lie in the interval − 0.15 ≤ ΔMg ≤ +0.12 mag. The mean and standard deviation of the residuals are < ΔMg > = − 0.002 and σ = 0.065 mag, respectively. The calibration of the MJ absolute magnitude in terms of metallicity is carried out by using the fiducial sequences of the clusters M92, M13, 47 Tuc, NGC 2158, and NGC 6791. It is defined in the colour interval 0.90 ≤ (V − J)0 ≤ 1.75 mag and it covers the same metallicity interval of the Mg calibration. The absolute magnitude residuals obtained by the application of the procedure to the cluster M5 ([Fe/H] = −1.40 dex) and 46 solar metallicity, − 0.45 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ +0.35 dex, field stars lie in the interval − 0.29 and + 0.35 mag. However, the range of 87% of them is rather shorter, − 0.20 ≤ ΔMJ ≤ +0.20 mag. The mean and standard deviation of all residuals are < ΔMJ > =0.05 and σ = 0.13 mag, respectively. The derived relations are applicable to stars older than 4 Gyr for the Mg calibration, and older than 2 Gyr for the MJ calibration. The cited limits are the ages of the youngest calibration clusters in the two systems.

Noise considerations for experiments that aim to statistically estimate the 21 cm signal from high redshift neutral hydrogen during the Epoch of Reionisation (EoR) using interferometric data are typically computed assuming a tracked observation, where the telescope pointing centre and instrument phase centre are the same over the observation. Current low frequency interferometers use aperture arrays of fixed dipoles, which are steered electronically on the sky, and have different properties to mechanically-steered single apertures, such as reduced sensitivity away from zenith, and discrete pointing positions on the sky. These properties encourage the use of two additional observing modes: (1) zenith drift, where the pointing centre remains fixed at the zenith, and the phase centre tracks the sky, and (2) drift + shift, a hybrid mode where the telescope uses discrete pointing centres, and the sky drifts during each fixed pointing. These three observing modes view the sky differently, and therefore yield different uncertainties in the power spectrum according to the balance of radiometric noise and cosmic variance. The coherence of measurements made by the instrument in these modes dictates the optimal reduction in thermal noise by combination of coherent modes, and the reduction in cosmic variance by combination of incoherent modes (views of different patches of the sky). Along with calibration and instrument stability considerations, the balance between these noise components provides one measure for the utility of these three modes for measuring a statistical signature of the EoR signal. We provide a general framework for estimating the uncertainty in the power spectrum for a given observing mode, telescope beam shape, and interferometer antenna distribution. We then apply this framework to the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) using an analysis of the two-dimensional (2D) and one-dimensional (1D) power spectra for 900 hours of observing. We demonstrate that zenith drift scans can yield marginally lower uncertainty in the signal power compared with tracked scans for the MWA EoR experiment, and that moderately higher signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) estimates of the amplitude (3%) and slope (1%) of the 1D power spectrum are accessible, translating directly into a reduction in the required observing time to reach the same estimation precision. We find that the additional sensitivity of pointing at zenith, and the reduction in cosmic variance available with a zenith drift scan, makes this an attractive observing mode for current and future arrays.

In the context of the first light of MUSE, Integral Field Unit (IFU) spectrograph of second generation installed recently at VLT, we compute mock IFU Lyman-alpha (lyα) observations of a virtual dwarf galaxy, to help understanding and interpreting forthcoming observations. This study is an extension of the work carried out in Verhamme et al. (2012), where we studied the spatially integrated lyα properties of a dwarf galaxy. With the same data, we now investigate the spatial variations of lyα spectra.

Our knowledge of the dynamics and masses of galaxies in the Local Group has long been limited by the fact that only line-of-sight velocities were observationally accessible. This introduces significant degeneracies in dynamical models, which can only be resolved by measuring also the velocity components perpendicular to the line of sight. However, beyond the solar neighborhood, the corresponding proper motions have generally been too small to measure. This has changed dramatically over the past decade, especially due to the angular resolution and stability available on the Hubble Space Telescope. Proper motions can now be reliably measured throughout the Local Group, as illustrated by, e.g., the work of the HSTPROMO collaboration. In this review, I summarize the importance of proper motions for Local Group science, and I describe the current and future observational approaches and facilities available to measure proper motions. I highlight recent results on various Milky Way populations (globular clusters, the bulge, the metal-poor halo, hypervelocity stars, and tidal streams), dwarf satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds and the Andromeda System.

By now, observations of exoplanets have found more than 50 binary star systems hosting 71 planets. We expect these numbers to increase as more than 70% of the main sequence stars in the solar neighborhood are members of binary or multiple systems. The planetary motion in such systems depends strongly on both the parameters of the stellar system (stellar separation and eccentricity) and the architecture of the planetary system (number of planets and their orbital behaviour). In case a terrestrial planet moves in the so-called habitable zone (HZ) of its host star, the habitability of this planet depends on many parameters. A crucial factor is certainly the amount of water. We investigate in this work the transport of water from beyond the snow-line to the HZ in a binary star system and compare it to a single star system.

This is a review of the extant literature and recent work on the scaling relation(s) that link the gas content of galaxies to the measured star formation rates. A diverse array of observing techniques and underlying physical assumptions characterize the determination of these relations at different scales, that range from the tens of parsec sizes of molecular clouds to the tens of kpc sizes of whole galaxies. Different techniques and measurements, and a variety of strategies, have been used by many authors to compare the scaling relations, both within and across galaxies. Although the picture is far from final, the past decade has seen tremendous progress in this field, and more progress is expected over the next several years.

We conduct a case study on a normal star-forming galaxy (z=0.05) observed by the SAMI Galaxy Survey and demonstrate the feasibility and potential of using large integral field spectroscopic surveys to investigate the prevalence of galactic-scale outflows in the local Universe. We perform spectral decomposition to separate the different kinematic components overlapping in the line-of-sight direction that causes the skewed line profiles in the integral field data. The three kinematic components present distinctly different line ratios and kinematic properties. We model the line ratios with the shock/photoionization code mappings iv and demonstrate that the different emission line properties are caused by major galactic outflows that introduce shock excitation in addition to photoionization. These results set a benchmark of the type of analysis that can be achieved by the SAMI Galaxy Survey on large numbers of galaxies.

The stellar spin orientation relative to the orbital planes of multiplanet systems are becoming accessible to observations. For example, 55 Cancri is a system composed of 5 planets orbiting a member of a stellar binary for which a projected obliquity of 72±12 ° relative to the orbit of the innermost planet has been reported (Bourrier & Hébrard 2014). This large obliquity has been attributed to the perturbation induced by the binary. Here we describe the secular evolution of similar systems and we discuss the case of the 55 Cancri system more deeply. We provide two different orbital configurations compatible with the currently available observations.

We investigate the evolution of the Tully–Fisher relation out to z = 1 with 137 emission-line galaxies in the field that display a regular rotation curve. They follow a linear trend with lookback time being on average brighter by 1.1 Bmag and 60% smaller at z = 1. For a subsample of 48 objects with very regular gas kinematics and stellar structure we derive a TF scatter of 1.15mag, which is two times larger than local samples exhibit. This is probably due to modest variations in their star formation history and chemical enrichment.

In another study of 96 members of Abell 901/902 at z = 0.17 and 86 field galaxies with similar redshifts we find a difference in the TFR of 0.42mag in the B-band but no significant difference in stellar mass. Comparing specifically red spirals with blue ones in the cluster, the former are fainter on average by 0.35 Bmag and have 15% lower stellar masses. This is probably due to star formation quenching caused by ram-pressure in the cluster environment. Evidence for this scenario comes from strong distortions of the gas disk of red spirals that have at the same time a very regular stellar disk structure.

Longitudinal librations are periodic changes in the rotation angle of a planet or satellite. Their observation and subsequent interpretation have profoundly increased our understanding of the interior structure of Mercury. Likewise, libration is thought to provide important constraints on the interior structure of icy satellites. Here we study the libration of Mercury and large icy satellites rotating synchronously with their orbital motion and explain how it depends on the interior structure.

The SAGES Legacy Unifying Galaxies and GlobularS (SLUGGS) survey probes the outskirts of early-type galaxies (ETGs). SLUGGS uses the DEIMOS spectrograph on Keck to simultaneously obtain globular cluster and spatially resolved galaxy spectra. The galaxy spectra allow for the reconstruction of kinematic maps out to ∼3 effective radii (Re), while globular clusters (GCs) push the galactocentric limit out to ∼8–10Re. Stellar population parameters (abundances) can also be recovered. This provides a unique dataset for exploring the outer gradients (abundance and/or kinematic transition). We briefly present recent and salient results of the SLUGGS survey so far.

The properties of the host galaxies of quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) are essential for the understanding of the suspected coevolution of central supermassive black holes (BHs) and their host galaxies. In Busch et al. (2014), we present a study of 20 low-luminosity type-1 QSOs (LLQSO; Busch et al.2012) that have been selected from the Hamburg/ESO survey for bright UV-excess QSOs (z ≤ 0.06). Performing careful decomposition of deep near-infrared J,H,K images, we found that the observed sources do not follow published MBH – Lbulge relations for inactive galaxies, supporting similar results found for type-1 AGN in the optical. This can be explained by overluminous bulges with very young stellar populations or undermassive black holes that are observed in a phase of growth. We use 3d-spectroscopy in the optical and near-infrared as a powerful tool to analyze gas and stellar kinematics, determine gas masses, star formation rate, trace underlying stellar continuum, etc. (e.g., Smajić et al.2014) and thereby constrain possible evolution scenarios. The results will be interpreted in the context of galaxy evolution and particularly the still unknown role of the AGN in this process. Here, we show first results for HE 1029-1831.

We investigate the origin of stellar metallicity gradients in massive galaxies at large radii (r > 2 Reff) using ten cosmological zoom simulations of halos with 6 × 1012M⊙ < Mhalo < 2 × 1013M⊙. The simulations follow metal cooling and enrichment from SNII, SNIa and AGB winds. We explore the differential impact of an empirical model for galactic winds that reproduces the evolution of the mass-metallicity relation. At larger radii, the galaxies become more dominated by stars accreted from satellite galaxies in major and minor mergers. In the wind model, fewer stars are accreted, but they are significantly more metal poor resulting in steep global metallicity (〈 ▽ Zstars 〉= -0.35 dex/dex) gradients in agreement with observations. Metallicity gradients of models without winds are inconsistent with observations. For the wind model, stellar accretion is steepening existing in-situ metallicity gradients by about 0.2 dex by the present day and is required to match observed gradients. Metallicity gradients are significantly steeper for systems, which have accreted stars in minor mergers. In contrast, galaxies with major mergers have relatively flat gradients, confirming previous results. We highlight the importance of stellar accretion for stellar population properties of massive galaxies at large radii, which provide important constraints for formation models.

Several observations of the central region of the Hydra I galaxy cluster point to a multi-epoch assembly history. Using our novel FORS2/VLT spectroscopic data set, we were able to map the luminosity-weighted age, [Fe/H] and [α/Fe] distributions for the stellar populations around the cD galaxy NGC 3311. Our results indicate that the stellar populations follow the trends of the photometric substructures, with distinct properties that may aid to constrain the evolutionary scenarios for the formation of the cluster core.