Bicep was a telescope designed to probe the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) for the signature of gravitational waves produced during the epoch of inflation. The instrument was developed by a team of scientists from Caltech/JPL, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego. It was installed at the South Pole in November 2005 and the CMB observations were conducted from February to November each year with one winter-over scientist responsible for operating and maintaining the instrument. Taking advantage of the excellent atmospheric conditions at the South Pole, we mapped 2% of the sky at 100 and 150 GHz. We completed 3 years of observations from 2006 to 2008, mapping the CMB polarization anisotropy at degree angular scales with unprecedented sensitivity. In 2010, a next generation instrument, Bicep2, will be installed on the existing telescope mount for an even deeper survey.

As the Nobeyama Radio Observatory Legacy Project: Survey of Giant Molecular Clouds in M33, we have been mapping M33 in CO(1-0) with the multi-beam receiver BEARS equipped on the 45-m telescope using the OTF mapping technique since 2007. The purpose of this project is to investigate the physical properties of GMCs and understand the evolutionary process from GMC formation to star formation in GMCs by comparing with various data such as CO(3-2), 1.1 mm continuum obtained with ASTE10m telescope at Atacama and the optical data obtained with SUBARU. We identified 87 GMCs using the first year data of CO(1-0) and observed 28 GMCs among them in CO(3-2) with ASTE (Onodera 2009, PhD thesis, University of Tokyo). From the comparison of these lines, it was shown that the CO(3-2)/CO(1-0) ratio increases with star forming activity in the GMCs. Furthermore, we found that more massive GMCs tend to have higher CO(3-2)/CO(1-0) ratio. Since the ratio is thought to be an indicator of the fraction of warm and dense molecular gas, our results imply that the fraction of warm and dense gas increases with GMC mass. Especially, since the ratio in the GMCs with low star forming activity is in the range where the ratio depends mainly on the density, we speculate that dense gas fraction increases with GMC mass.

I am pleased to recall that the first determination of the Li–abundance in the Sun was made at the Geneva Observatory in 1975 by Edith Müller, Eric Peytremann and Ramiro de la Reza on the basis of spectra taken at Kitt Peak. The first Be determination was also made in Geneva the same year by Y. Chmielewski, J. Brault (Kitt Peak National Observatory) and E. Müller. These two outstanding works opened the door for all further investigations on these light elements.

We present a consistent age ordering for young clusters and groups determined using the contraction of stars through their pre-main-sequence phase. We compare these with ages derived from the evolution of the upper main-sequence stars, and find the upper MS ages are older by a factor 1.5 to 2. We show that increasing the binary fraction and number of equal-mass binaries amongst the O-stars compared to the rest of the MS cannot remove this discrepancy.

A core helium flash after the departure from the red giant branch (i.e. "hot-flasher scenario") offers one of the most promising explanations for the origin of He-sdO stars. Recently, Miller Bertolami et al. (2008) have shown that many surface properties of H-deficient sdO stars (the He-sdO stars) could be explained through this scenario if chemical diffusion is taken into account. In this context the He-sdO stars formed during a hot-flasher event would transform into H-rich hot-sdB stars (33000-38000 K) as a consequence of diffusion of the remaining H towards the surface of the star. Thus, some hot sdBs might be the descendants of He-sdO stars that have previously burnt most of their H-content and, thus, a very thin H envelope should be expected (10−9 to 10−10 M⊙, see Miller Bertolami et al. 2008 for details). Interestingly enough, the location of these sdB stars in the logg - Teff diagram should overlap with the domain of the rapidly pulsating (p-mode) EC 14026 stars. This fact opens the interesting possibility of employing asteroseismology to investigate the existence of hot-sdB stars characterized by such very thin H envelopes. In this preliminary investigation, we explore the sensitivity of the acoustic pulsation spectrum of EC 14026 stars to the thickness of the H envelope.

The pulsation analysis presented in this work was performed with the help of the adiabatic radial and nonradial pulsation code employed by our group in numerous asteroseismological studies of white dwarfs and pre-white dwarfs (see Córsico et al. 2008 and references therein). The stellar models adopted in the present study where extracted from the 0.48150 M⊙ (Z= 0.001) sequence of Miller Bertolami et al. (2008). Given the exploratory nature of this work, in order to analyze the effects of different thicknesses of the H-rich envelope on the pulsation spectrum of sdB stars we have artificially added a H-rich envelope in the outermost layers of our initial model. We have considered four different thicknesses of the H envelope (log Menv/M⊙ ~ −4, −6, −8, −10) in addition to the self-consistent model (which lacks a H envelope). Next, we have pursued the evolution of the five sequences during the evolution on the HB. For each stellar model, we have computed the radial and nonradial p-modes with periods longer than 20 seconds, thus comfortably covering the observed period range of EC 14026 stars (80 - 400 sec).

Our results show that the cycle of trapping is markedly smaller for the case of thick H-envelope models (Menv > 10−7 M⊙) than for the thin H-envelope models (Menv < 10−7 M⊙). We find that sdB stars with very thin H envelopes (Menv < 10−7 M⊙) would not display almost any kind of trapping features in their frequency distribution at the observed range in EC 14026 stars (ν < 13 mHz). Consequently their frequency spectra should be significantly different from that of normal sdB stars. We plan to explore in future works to which extent the shape of the chemical transitions (here adopted as simple gaussian profiles) affects the mode-trapping features.

The pre-main sequence star V1647 Ori started a new outburst in August 2008. From October 2008 to February 2009 we monitored V1647 Ori, obtaining quasi-simultaneous VLT-CRIRES near-IR spectroscopy, VLT-VISIR mid-IR spectroscopy and VLT-FORS2 optical spectroscopy. We studied the evolution of H2 and CO emission from hot and warm gas and Hα and forbidden line-emission during the initial outburst phase of V1647 Ori. Hα is observed in emission displaying P-Cygni profiles with blue-shifted absorption up to –700 km/s, suggesting the presence of a high velocity wind (Fig. 1a). [OI] emission at 6300 Å is observed displaying a blue-shifted emission shoulder, indicating the presence of material moving away from the star (Fig. 1b). We detect H2 1-0 S(1) and CO (P4 to P14 and P30-P38) ro-vibrational lines centered at the velocity of the star at all epochs (Fig. 1c & d). This strongly suggests that the H2 and CO emission originates from a disk and not from a warm outflow. The H2 1–0 S(0) and 2-1 S(1) ro-vibrational lines at 2.22 and 2.24 μm and the pure-rotational H2 0–0 S(1) and 0–0 S(2) lines at 17 and 12 μm were not detected in our spectra. Changes in the Hα and [OI] profiles and the H2 and CO emission observed do not correlate. We modeled the H2 and CO line profiles assuming emission from a flat disk in keplerian rotation with line intensity decreasing with radius (I ~ I0(R/Rmin)−α). We found that the disk of V1647 Ori is observed nearly face-on and that the line emission is produced within a fraction of an AU of the star (Fig. 1d).

Laser Comb Wavelength calibration shows ThAr one locally unreliable with deviations up to 100 m s−1 (or Δα/α ≈ 7 · 10−6 for a Fe ii-Mg ii pair) while delivering an overall 1 m s−1 accuracy. Comparison of line shifts of the 5 Fe ii lines with identical sensitivity to Δα/α offers a clean way to test local wavelength calibration errors of whatever origin.

We analyze the statistics and star formation rate obtained in high-resolution numerical experiments of forced supersonic turbulence, and compare with observations. We concentrate on a systematic comparison of solenoidal (divergence-free) and compressive (curl-free) forcing (Federrath et al. 2009 a, b), which are two limiting cases of turbulence driving. Our results show that for the same RMS Mach number, compressive forcing produces a three times larger standard deviation of the density probability distribution. When self-gravity is included in the models, the star formation rate is more than one order of magnitude higher for compressive forcing than for solenoidal forcing.

The nature of the Galactic Ridge X-Ray Emission (GRXE) has been under scientific debate since its discovery more than 30 years ago. It is observed as extended emission along the Galactic disk. The question was: is GRXE truly diffuse or is it composed from a large number of unresolved point sources? Using near-infrared Galaxy maps measured with the DIRBE experiment and data from the INTEGRAL observatory, we show that the galactic background in the energy range 20-60 keV originates from the stellar population of the Galaxy, which is in contrast to the diffuse nature believed before (Krivonos et al., 2007). Here we show preliminary results of studying the transition region from hard X-rays to gamma diffuse background of the Galaxy, revealing the broad band picture of Galactic Background emission.

The first set of Chinese Antarctic telescopes at Dome A is called CSTAR. It consists of four 14.5 cm wide-field telescopes and was installed at Dome A during the traverse of 2007/2008. CSTAR successfully operated for 135 days in 2008 and for more than 200 days in 2009. This paper briefly introduces recent developments in Chinese Antarctic astronomy and their international collaborative activities. It also describes future plans for Dome A, as the building of Kunlun Station began in January of this year.

We present a site testing program initiated at the SUMMIT station on the Greenland Ice Cap. A DIMM was mounted in the SWISS tower, 39 m above the ice level, during a period of 3 weeks in the late Arctic summer 2008. Tracking Polaris, the DIMM obtained continuous seeing measurements. The campaign was hampered by poor weather and the measured seeing was fluctuating, suggesting that the boundary layer was very unstable. However, during short periods, the un-calibrated seeing went below 0″.5, indicating that the free atmosphere seeing above Greenland is not significantly different from what is found above the Antarctic plateau.

We recently presented (Sbordone et al., 2009a) the largest sample to date of lithium abundances in extremely metal-poor (EMP) Halo dwarf and Turn-Off (TO) stars. One of the most crucial aspects in estimating Li abundances is the Teff determination, since the Li I 670.8 nm doublet is highly temperature sensitive. In this short contribution we concentrate on the Teff determination based on Hα wings fitting, and on its sensitivity to the chosen stellar gravity.

An algorithm, MEAD, is presented, which can map extinction in three dimensions, with fine distance and angular resolutions. MEAD is then employed when studying the structure of the outer Galaxy. We show that the Galaxy's radial density profile takes the form of a broken exponential, with density dropping off more steeply beyond a Galacto-centric radius of ~13 kpc.

Understanding how disks dissipate is essential to studies of planet formation. Infrared observations of young stars demonstrate that optically-thick circumstellar disks disappear from around half the stars in low-mass star-forming regions by an age of 3 Myr and are almost entirely absent in 10 Myr old associations (e.g. Haisch et al., 2001). Accretion ceases on the same approximate timescale (e.g. Calvet et al. 2005). The disappearence of gas and dust - planetary building material - places stringent limits on the timescales of giant planet formation. During this crucial interval, planet(esimal)s form and the remaining disk material is accreted or dispersed. Mid-infrared spectrophotometry of protoplanetary disks has revealed a small sub-class of objects in the midst of losing their disk material. These disks have spectral energy distributions (SEDs) suggestive of large inner gaps with low dust content, often interpreted as a signature of young planets. Such objects are still rare although Spitzer surveys have significantly increased the number of known transitional objects (e.g. Brown et al. 2007, D'Alessio et al., 2005). However, spectrophotometric signatures are indirect and notoriously difficult to interpret as multiple physical scenarios can result in the same SED. Recent direct imaging from millimeter interferometry has confirmed the presence of large inner holes in transitional disks, providing additional constraints and lending confidence to current SED interpretations (Brown et al. 2008, Brown et al. 2009, Andrews et al. 2009, Isella et al., 2009).

We performed a 1D LTE chemical abundance analysis of an extremely metal-poor star BD+44°493 ([Fe/H]= −3.7), and set a very low upper limit for its Be abundance: A(Be) < −2.0. It may indicate that the decreasing trend of Be abundances with lower [Fe/H] still holds at [Fe/H] < −3.5, and demonstrate that high C and O abundances do not necessarily imply high Be abundances. However, since the star is a subgiant with Teff ~ 5500K, Be may be depleted.

Ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs; L > 1012 L⊙) are quite rare in the local universe, but seem to dominate the co-moving energy density at z > 2. Many are optically-faint, dust-obscured galaxies that have been identified only relatively recently by the detection of their thermal dust emission redshifted into the sub-mm wavelengths. These submm galaxies (SMGs) have been shown to be a massive objects (M* ~ 1011 M⊙) undergoing intense star-formation(SFRs ~ 102 − 103 M⊙ yr−1) and the likely progenitors of massive ellipticals today. However, the AGN contribution to the far-IR luminosity had for years remained a caveat to these results. We used the Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) to investigate the energetics of 24 radio-identified and spectroscopically-confirmed SMGs in the redshift range of 0.6 < z < 3.2. We find emission from Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) – which are associated with intense star-formation activity – in >80% of our sample and find that the median mid-IR spectrum is well described by a starburst component with an additional power-law continuum representing < 32% AGN contribution to the far-IR luminosity. We also find evidence for a more extended distribution of warm dust in SMGs compared to the more compact nuclear bursts in local ULIRGs and starbursts, suggesting that SMGs are not simple high-redshift analogs of local ULIRGs or nuclear starbursts, but have star formation which resembles that seen in less-extreme star-forming environments at z ~ 0.

Current theories that seek to unify gravity with the other fundamental interactions suggest that spatial and temporal variation of fundamental constants is a possibility, or even a necessity, in an expanding Universe. Several studies have tried to probe the values of constants at earlier stages in the evolution of the Universe, using tools such as big-bang nucleosynthesis, the Oklo natural nuclear reactor, quasar absorption spectra, and atomic clocks (see, e.g. Flambaum & Berengut (2009)).

Helioseismology has provided us with the unique knowledge of the interior structure and dynamics of the Sun, and the variations with the solar cycle. However, the basic mechanisms of solar magnetic activity, formation of sunspots and active regions are still unknown. Determining the physical properties of the solar dynamo, detecting emerging active regions and observing the subsurface dynamics of sunspots are among the most important and challenging problems. The current status and perspectives of helioseismology are briefly discussed.

In the next few years, both Herschel and ALMA will be providing unique new insights into the physics and chemistry of protoplanetary disks. In particular, they will be used to study how disks evolve from massive embedded systems around young Class 0 objects, through low-mass disks around optically-visible T Tauri stars, to debris disks around stars on the main-sequence. Gas dominates the mass in the younger systems, but in debris systems there is very little - if any. How does the gas disappear, what is the effect of this on planetary formation, and what is the role of “transition” disks? I outline some of the areas where these two large facilities will contribute to these studies, focussing on the Herschel Key project, GASPS, and looking forward to the role of ALMA.

The special session aims at discussing an integrated approach of the different efforts to increase and promote the teaching and learning of astronomy in the world, with emphasis on developing countries. To this end, attention will be given to research on education, specifically in the field of physics, to best practices of the use of astronomy in educational systems (specifically in developing countries), and to innovative learning initiatives other than formal education. The Special Session aims also at creating a universal perspective wherein modern (post-Copernican) astronomy will presented as an intellectual cumulus. The objective of the session is to disseminate best practices in teaching and learning activities of astronomy and to give an opportunity to learn about initiatives in different cultural and socio-economic settings. The special session also wants to give food-for-thought and proposals for reflection for an integrative approach, and for optimization processes, to enhance the interest in astronomy and its role as a trigger towards science education in the educational systems, with emphasis on the developing countries. The outcome should be a sensitization of teachers and students alike to the concept of a universal history of astronomy and creation of some reliable source material which can be used as a teaching aid in a culture-specific context. The outcome could be a set of recommendations for future integrated actions, and eventually recommendations on new initiatives, framed into the new decadal policy plan.