I discuss the formation of the modern cosmological paradigm. In more detail I describe the early study of dark matter and cosmic web and the role of Yakov Zeldovich in the formation of the present concepts on these subjects.

The powerful Lagrangian view of structure formation was essentially introduced to cosmology by Zel'dovich. In the current cosmological paradigm, a dark-matter-sheet 3D manifold, inhabiting 6D position-velocity phase space, was flat (with vanishing velocity) at the big bang. Afterward, gravity stretched and bunched the sheet together in different places, forming a cosmic web when projected to the position coordinates.

Here, I explain some properties of an origami approximation, in which the sheet does not stretch or contract (an assumption that is false in general), but is allowed to fold. Even without stretching, the sheet can form an idealized cosmic web, with convex polyhedral voids separated by straight walls and filaments, joined by convex polyhedral nodes. The nodes form in ‘polygonal’ or ‘polyhedral’ collapse, somewhat like spherical/ellipsoidal collapse, except incorporating simultaneous filament and wall formation. The origami approximation allows phase-space geometries of nodes, filaments, and walls to be more easily understood, and may aid in understanding spin correlations between nearby galaxies. This contribution explores kinematic origami-approximation models giving velocity fields for the first time.

We present the first results for the estimation of gravity and effective temperature of poorly studied chemically peculiar stars recently observed with the spectropolarimeter ESPaDOnS at CFHT in the frame of the VeSElkA (Vertical Stratification of Elements Abundance) project. A grid of theoretical stellar atmosphere models with the corresponding fluxes has been calculated using the PHOENIX code. We have used these fluxes to fit Balmer line profiles employing the code FITSB2 that produces estimates of the effective temperature, surface gravity and radial velocity for each star.

We have calculated the pulsations of massive stars using a nonlinear hydrodynamic code including time-dependent convection. The basic structure models are based on a standard grid published by Meynet et al. (1994). Using the basic structure, we calculated envelope models, which include the outer few percent of the star. These models go down to depths of at least 2 million K. These models, which range from 40 to 85 solar masses, show a range of pulsation behaviours. We find models with very long period pulsations (> 100 d), resulting in high amplitude changes in the surface properties. We also find a few models that show outburst-like behaviour. The details of this behaviour are discussed, including calculations of the resulting wind mass-loss rates.

Shaped by strong mass loss, rapid rotation, and/or the presence of a close companion, the circumstellar environment around the most massive stars is complex and anything but spherical. Here we provide a brief overview of the high spatial resolution observations of Eta Carinae performed with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). Special emphasis is given to discuss VLTI/AMBER and VLTI/VINCI observations, which directly resolve spatial scales comparable to those where mass loss originates. Studying scales as small as a few milli-arcseconds allows us to investigate kinematical effects of rotation and binarity in more detail than ever before.

We present some new and interesting results on the complementarity between asteroseismology and interferometry, the detection of non-radial pulsations in massive stars and the possibility for evidencing differential rotation on the surface of Bn stars. We also discuss the curretn interferometric facilities, namely the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI)/AMBER, VLTI/MIDI, VLTI/PIONIER within the European Southern Observatory (ESO) context and the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) array with their current limitations. The forthcoming second-generation VLTI instruments GRAVITY and MATISSE are presented as well as the FRIEND prototype in the visible spectral domain and an update of the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI). A conclusion is presented with a special emphasis on the foreseen difficulties for a third generation of interferometric instruments within the (budget limited) Extremely Large Telescope framework and the need for strong science cases to push a future visible beam combiner.

I consider a sample of ‘Updated Nearby Galaxy Catalog’ that contains eight hundred objects within 11 Mpc. Environment of each galaxy is characterized by a tidal index Θ1 depending on separation and mass of the galaxy Main Disturber (=MD). The UNGC galaxies with a common MD are ascribed to its ‘suite’ and ranked according to their Θ1. Fifteen the most populated suites contain more than half of the UNGC sample. The fraction of MDs among the brightest galaxies is almost 100% and drops to 50% at M_B = -18 mag. The observational properties of galaxies accumulated in UNGC are used to derive orbital masses of giant galaxies via motions of their satellites. The average orbital-to-stellar mass ratio for them is M orb M* ≃ 30, corresponding to the mean local density of matter Ωm ≃ 0.09, i.e 1/3 of the global cosmic one. The dark-to-stellar mass ratio for the Milky Way and M31 is typical for other neighboring giant galaxies.

The stars of the middle main-sequence have relatively quiescent outer layers, and unusual chemical abundance patterns may develop in their atmospheres, revealing the action of such subsurface phenomena as gravitational settling and radiatively driven levitation of trace elements, and their competition with mixing processes such as turbulent diffusion. We report the discovery of the time evolution of such chemical tracers through the main-sequence lifetime of magnetic chemically peculiar stars.

Quasars, as the most luminous persistent sources in the Universe, have broad applications for cosmological studies. In particular, they can be employed to directly measure the expansion history of the Universe, similarly to SNe Ia. The advantage of quasars is that they are numerous, cover a broad range of redshifts, up to z = 7, and do not show significant evolution of metallicity with redshift. The idea is based on the relation between the time delay of an emission line and the continuum, and the absolute monochromatic luminosity of a quasar. For intermediate redshift quasars, the suitable line is Mg II. Between December 2012 and March 2014, we performed five spectroscopic observations of the QSO CTS C30.10 (z = 0.900) using the South African Large Telesope (SALT), supplemented with photometric monitoring, with the aim of determining the variability of the line shape, changes in the total line intensity and in the continuum. We show that the method is very promising.

Comparison of galaxy flows with those predicted from the local galaxy distribution ended as an active field after two analyses came to vastly different conclusions 25 years ago, but that was due to faulty data. All the old results are therefore suspect. With new data collected in the last several years, the problem deserves another look. The goal is to explain the 640 km/s dipole anisotropy of the CMBR. For this we analyze the gravity field inferred from the enormous data set derived from the 2MASS collection of galaxies (Huchra et al. 2005), and compare it to the velocity field derived from the well calibrated SFI++ Tully-Fisher catalog (Springob et al. 2007). Using the “Inverse Method” to minimize Malmquist biases, within 10,000 km/s the gravity field is seen to predict the velocity field (Davis et al. 2011) to remarkable consistency. This is a beautiful demonstration of linear perturbation theory and is fully consistent with standard values of the cosmological variables.

The aim of this study is to analyse and determine elemental abundances for a large sample of distant B stars in the outer Galactic disk in order to constrain the chemical distribution of the Galactic disk and models of chemical evolution of the Galaxy. Here, we present preliminary results on a few stars along with the adopted methodology based on securing simultaneous O and Si ionization equilibria with consistent NLTE model atmospheres.

We present the analysis of a sample of strong-lensing galaxy group candidates. Our main findings are: confirmation of group-scale systems, complex light distributions, presence of large-scale structures in their surroundings, and evidence of a strong-lensing bias in the mass-concentration relation. We also report the detection of the first 'Bullet group'.

In 2008, Granett et al. claimed a direct detection of the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (iSW) effect, through the stacking of CMB patches at the positions of identified superstructures. Additionally, the high amplitude of their measured signal was reported to be at odds with predictions from the standard model of cosmology. However, a closer inspection of these results prompts multiple questions, more specifically about the amplitude and significance of the expected signal. We propose here an original theoretical prediction of the iSW effect produced by such superstructures. We use simulations based on GR and the LTB metric to reproduce cosmic structures and predict their exact theoretical iSW effect on the CMB. The amplitudes predicted with this method are consistent with the signal measured when properly accounting the contribution of the non-negligible (and fortuitous) primordial CMB fluctuations to the total signal. It also highlights the tricky nature of stacking measurements and their interpretation.

We describe the Bayesian \barcode\ formalism that has been designed towards the reconstruction of the Cosmic Web in a given volume on the basis of the sampled galaxy cluster distribution. Based on the realization that the massive compact clusters are responsible for the major share of the large scale tidal force field shaping the anisotropic and in particular filamentary features in the Cosmic Web. Given the nonlinearity of the constraints imposed by the cluster configurations, we resort to a state-of-the-art constrained reconstruction technique to find a proper statistically sampled realization of the original initial density and velocity field in the same cosmic region. Ultimately, the subsequent gravitational evolution of these initial conditions towards the implied Cosmic Web configuration can be followed on the basis of a proper analytical model or an N-body computer simulation. The BARCODE formalism includes an implicit treatment for redshift space distortions. This enables a direct reconstruction on the basis of observational data, without the need for a correction of redshift space artifacts. In this contribution we provide a general overview of the the Cosmic Web connection with clusters and a description of the Bayesian BARCODE formalism. We conclude with a presentation of its successful workings with respect to test runs based on a simulated large scale matter distribution, in physical space as well as in redshift space.

Cosmic voids are becoming key players in testing the physics of our Universe.Here we concentrate on the abundances and the dynamics of voids as these are among the best candidatesto provide information on cosmological parameters. Cai, Padilla & Li (2014)use the abundance of voids to tell apart Hu & Sawicki f(R) models from General Relativity. An interestingresult is that even though, as expected, voids in the dark matter field are emptier in f(R) gravity due to the fifth force expellingaway from the void centres, this result is reversed when haloes are used to find voids. The abundance of voids in this casebecomes even lower in f(R) compared to GR for large voids. Still, the differences are significant and thisprovides a way to tell apart these models. The velocity field differences between f(R) and GR, on the other hand, arethe same for halo voids and for dark matter voids.Paz et al. (2013), concentrate on the velocity profiles around voids. First they show the necessityof four parameters to describe the density profiles around voids given two distinct voidpopulations, voids-in-voids and voids-in-clouds. This profile is used to predict peculiar velocities around voids,and the combination of the latter with void density profiles allows the construction of modelvoid-galaxy cross-correlation functions with redshift space distortions. When these modelsare tuned to fit the measured correlation functions for voids and galaxies in the SloanDigital Sky Survey, small voids are found to be of the void-in-cloud type, whereas largerones are consistent with being void-in-void. This is a novel result that is obtaineddirectly from redshift space data around voids. These profiles can be used toremove systematics on void-galaxy Alcock-Pacinsky tests coming from redshift-space distortions.

The aim of our work was to determine the environmental density of galaxies from SDSS DR9 using the Voronoi tessellation. We constructed the 3D Voronoi tessellation for the volume-limited galaxy sample within 0.02 <z<0.1 and -24 M r-20.7 using an inverse volume of Voronoi cell as a parameter describing the local environmental density of a galaxy. It allowed us to inspect the morphology - density relation. We obtained that the early type galaxies prefer to reside in the Voronoi cells of smaller volumes (i.e. dense environments) than the late type galaxies, which are located in the larger Voronoi cells (i.e. sparse environments).

We review potential mass-loss mechanisms in the various evolutionary stages of massive stars, from the well-known line-driven winds of O-stars and BA-supergiants to the less-understood winds of Red Supergiants. We discuss optically thick winds from Wolf-Rayet stars and Very Massive Stars, and the hypothesis of porosity-moderated, continuum-driven mass loss from stars formally exceeding the Eddington limit, which might explain the giant outbursts from Luminous Blue Variables. We finish this review with a glance on the impact of rapid rotation, magnetic fields and small-scale inhomogeneities in line-driven winds.

On the basis of the Hyper – Leda Catalogue HyperLeda 8293 galaxies with heliocentric radial velocities below 2500 km s-1 were selected; 4570 had known morphological types (4366 had calculated b/a ratio). We checked the frequency of the distribution of various types in the LSC, finding spirals and irregulars most numerous, in accordance with expectations. The axial ratio of galaxy diameters of various types was studied, and the dependence of this parameter on the morphological type was noted.

In the Century since Slipher's first observations, roughly three million galaxy redshifts have been measured. The resulting maps of large-scale structure have taught us much of central importance in cosmology, ranging from the matter content of the universe to the study of the primordial density fluctuations. This talk aims to review some of the key observational and theoretical milestones on this journey, and to speculate about what the future may bring.

We investigate the accuracy achievable on measurements of the the growth rate of structure f(z) using redshift-space distortions (RSD), when (a) these are measured on the group-galaxy cross correlation function; (b) the latter is expanded over a modified version of the conventional spherical armonics, “truncated multipole moments”. Simulation results give first indications that this combination can push systematic errors on f(z) below 3%, using scales r ⩾ 10h −1 Mpc.