TV shows have the biggest impact for the public, so we can use them to inform and educate the public about light pollution and the importance of the dark sky for humanity and for the contemporary society. Some examples used in the TV show Us and the Sky at Columna TV, Romania, are presented.

The system of accretion disk and black hole is usually considered as the central engine of Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs). It is usually thought that the disk in the central engine of GRBs is the advection-dominated accretion disk, which is developed from a massive (mass Mdisk) torus at radius rdisk. We find a positive correlation between the isotropic gamma-ray energy Eiso and duration (so-called T90) for GRBs. We interpret this correlation within the advection-dominated accretion disk model, associating Eiso and T90 with Mdisk and viscous timescale respectively.

Quark matter at finite temperature and subject to strong magnetic fields is possibly present in the early stages of heavy ion collisions and in the interior of protoneutron stars. We use the mean field approximation to investigate this type of quark matter described by the Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model. The energy per baryon of magnetized quark matter becomes more bound than nuclear matter made of iron nuclei, for magnetic fields around 1019 G. When the su(3) NJL model is applied to stellar matter, the maximum mass configurations are always above 1.45 solar masses and may be as high as 1.9 solar masses for a central magnetic field of 1018 G. These numbers are within the masses of observed neutron stars but exclude the recently measured star with 1.97 solar mass.

The effect of the magnetic field on the effective quark masses and chemical potentials is only felt for quite strong magnetic fields, above 5 × 1018 G, with larger effects for the lower densities. Spin polarizations are more sensitive to weaker magnetic fields and are larger for lower temperatures and lower densities.

I will review the secular evolution of the Milky Way disk and bulge with particular attention to the bulge and disk. Evidence for the importance of stellar migration in the Solar neighbourhood will be presented. The upcoming Gaia satellite will lead to a wealth of new data with which to explore these effects.

High precision spectroscopy is one of the most successful methods to detect extra-solar planets. To enable the detection of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone, extremely precise instruments are required. Our lack of knowledge of the instrument line profile, non-linearity and charge transfer efficiency effects in the detector limits the achievable precision of an instrument. We report our studies on the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial- velocity Planet Searcher) line profiles, measured using the unresolved lines of a Laser Frequency Comb (LFC). We show how the line profile changes as a function of position and signal, and estimate the errors made in the line centroid measurement due to the variation of the line profile.

The almost stately evolution of the global heliospheric magnetic field pattern during most of the solar cycle belies the intense dynamic interplay of photospheric and coronal flux concentrations on scales both large and small. The statistical characteristics of emerging bipoles and active regions lead to development of systematic magnetic patterns. Diffusion and flows impel features to interact constructively and destructively, and on longer time scales they may help drive the creation of new flux. Peculiar properties of the components in each solar cycle determine the specific details and provide additional clues about their sources. The interactions of complex developing features with the existing global magnetic environment drive impulsive events on all scales. Predominantly new-polarity surges originating in active regions at low latitudes can reach the poles in a year or two. Coronal holes and polar caps composed of short-lived, small-scale magnetic elements can persist for months and years. Advanced models coupled with comprehensive measurements of the visible solar surface, as well as the interior, corona, and heliosphere promise to revolutionize our understanding of the hierarchy we call the solar magnetic field.

We show that the dispersion in the Schmidt-Kennicutt (SK) law in galaxies is affected significantly by the evolutionary stage of star forming molecular gas, using narrow band Paα imaging of Taffy I, an interacting pair of galaxies. Star forming regions in the system show very uniform ages except for the bridge region, and the SK law of regions at the same age show a exceptionally tight SK law.

We found evidence for the super–orbital modulation in the X-ray emission of LS I + 61°303 from the longest monitoring date by the RXTE. The time evolution of the modulated fraction in the orbital light curves can be well fitted with a sinusoidal function having a super-orbital period of 1667 days. However, we have found a 281.8±44.6 day shift between the super-orbital variability found at radio frequencies and our X-ray data. We also find a super-orbital modulation in the maximum count rate of the orbital light curves, compatible with the former results, including the shift.

Red clump (RC) giants are excellent standard candles in the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud. The near-infrared K-band intrinsic luminosity of RC giants exhibits only a small variance and a weak dependence on chemical composition and age. In addition, RCs are often easily recognizable in the color–magnitude diagrams of open clusters, which renders them extremely useful distance indicators for some intermediate-age or old open clusters. Here we determine the distance moduli of five Galactic open clusters covering a range of metallicities and ages, based on RC giants in the cluster regions using 2mass photometric data. We compare our result with those from main-sequence fitting and also briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of RC-based cluster distance determination.

Following the progress of Chinese deep space exploration step, since 2006 we started a Mars mission, Yinghuo-1, by join in the Phobos-Grunt mission of Russia. A satellite bus platform and onboard payloads as well as an innovative open-loop radio tracking system have been developed by mission team. Also, together with Russian and German colleagues, we developed a kind of in-beam tracking method for measuring the rotation and nutation of Phobos, and developed the 1st Phobos global gravity field for the mission. We are promoting the Chinese new mission for Mars exploration. Although the joint YH-1 & Phobos-Grunt mission failed, the new techniques and knowledge developed by mission teams may benifit the future missions. In fact, the open-loop technique have been applied into lunar and other planetary missions, and the method in developing Phobos global gravity field will be used in the study of Rosetta mission and future Chinese mission for small body.

Since the discovery of its transiting nature, the super-Earth 55 Cnc e has become one of the most enthusiastically studied exoplanets, having been observed spectroscopically and photometrically, in the ultraviolet, optical and infrared regimes. To this rapidly growing data set, we contribute 42 days of new, nearly continuous MOST photometry of the 55 Cnc system. Our analysis of these observations together with the discovery photometry obtained in 2011 allows us to determine the planetary radius (1.990+0.084−0.080) and orbital period (0.7365417+0.0000025−0.0000028) of 55 Cnc e with unprecedented precision. We also followed up on the out-of-transit phase variation first observed in the 2011 photometry, and set an upper limit on the depth of the planet's secondary eclipse, leading to an upper limit on its geometric albedo of 0.6.

We observed with the Submillimeter Array and IRAM 30 m telescope three high-mass star-forming regions in different evolutionary stages in the W3 high-mass star formation complex. These regions, i.e. W3 SMS1 (W3 IRS5), SMS2 (W3 IRS4) and SMS3, are located within the same large-scale environment, which allows us to study rotation and outflows as well as chemical properties in an evolutionary sense. While we find multiple mm continuum sources toward all regions, these three subregions exhibit different dynamical and chemical properties, which indicates that they are in different evolutionary stages. Even within each sub-region, massive cores of different ages are found, e.g. in SMS2, sub-sources from the most evolved UCHii region to potential starless cores exist within 30 000 AU (left panel, Fig. 1). Outflows and rotational structures are found in SMS1 and SMS2. Evidence for interactions between the molecular cloud and the HII regions is found in the 13CO channel maps (right panel, Fig. 1), which may indicate triggered star formation.

The Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration aims to detect gravitational waves (GWs) through the precise timing of millisecond pulsars. GWs will come in the form of a stochastic background, continuous sources and burst sources. Here we will review recent progress on the development of data analysis pipelines aimed at the detection of a stochastic background as well as continuous sources. We will introduce the Optimal Statistic and F-Statistic methods that are used in the stochastic and continuous pipelines, respectively. Both pipelines are fully functional on real pulsar timing data and take into account the timing models for each pulsar. Finally, we will present the efficacy of each pipeline on locally simulated data as well as data from the 2012 IPTA data challenge.

Emission variability from Black Hole objects like Seyfert Galaxies, Quasars etc. shows a irregular variation with various amplitude and time scale. Further analysis of the emission shows the appearance of the lognormal distribution. Such distribution cannot be explained by conventional Self Organized Criticality (SOC) Model. In this paper a modified SOC model with cellular automaton mechanism combined with advection process is introduced. Simulation shows that lognormal distribution can be resulted, while the other characteristics of PSD and structure function of the original SOC model can be maintained. Incorporation of the advection process is the key factor for the appearance of lognormal distribution.

We present a Resonant Switch (RS) model of twin peak high-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (HF QPOs), assuming switch of twin oscillations at a resonant point, where frequencies of the upper and lower oscillations νU and νL become to be commensurable and the twin oscillations change from one pair of the oscillating modes (corresponding to a specific model of HF QPOs) to some other pair due to non-linear resonant phenomena. The RS model enables to determine range of allowed values of spin a and mass M of the neutron star located at the atoll source 4U 1636-53 where two resonant points are observed at frequency ratios νU : νL = 3:2, 5:4.

We study the effects of including binary star evolution in population synthesis models. We use the Hurley et al. (2002) code to compute binary star evolutionary tracks, and follow the procedure by Han et al. (2002), in particular, the two 2HeWD merger channel, to form EHB stars from a binary pair. We apply the resulting models to study UV excess ETGs.

Movement and coalescence of magnetic elements could explain the evolution and growth of pores. There have been numerous studies focusing on flow fields in and around individual pores. We have undertaken a systematic study of the statistical properties of such flows. Data of the Hinode Solar Optical Telescope offer an opportunity for this type of research, because of the uniform data quality and absence of seeing so that pores can directly be compared in different environments and at various stages of their evolution. We analyzed about 220 time-series of G-band images using local correlation tracking. The thus computed flow maps make up a database, which covers various scenes on the solar surface. We use an isolated pore to illustrate the statistical parameters collected for further statistical analyses, which include information about morphology, horizontal flows, evolutionary stage (young, mature, or decaying), complexity of the surrounding magnetic field, and proximity to sunspots or cluster of G-band bright points.

We have discovered that Terzan 5, a stellar system in the Galactic Bulge, harbors two stellar populations with different iron content (Δ[Fe/H] ~ 0.5 dex) and possibly different ages. Moreover, the observed chemical patterns significantly differ from those observed in any known genuine globular cluster. These evidences demonstrate that, similarly to ω Centauri in the Halo, Terzan 5 is not a globular cluster, but a stellar system that was able to retain the gas ejected by violent supernova explosions. Moreover the striking chemical similarity with the Bulge stars suggests that Terzan 5 could be the relic of one of the massive clumps that contributed (through strong dynamical interactions with other pre-formed and internally-evolved sub-structures) to the formation of the Galactic Bulge.