The current angular momentum (AM) transport models fail to reproduce asterosieimic observations. One of the best candidates to explain this discrepancy is the magnetic field in radiative zones with its various possible topologies, for instance axisymmetric toroidal magnetic field. If such azimuthal field is strong enough, the Tayler’s instability could occur which induces a magnetic torque that allows a very efficient transport of AM and could trigger dynamo action in radiative layers. If such important field does not emerge at the surface, spectropolarimetry is blind. In this case, the only way to detect and characterise the field is by using magneto-asteroseismology. It consists in searching for the characteristic signatures of magnetic field in the observed frequency spectra of stellar oscillations.

The gender† dimension of science and technology has become one of the most important and debated issues worldwide, impacting society at every level. A variety of international initiatives on the subject have been undertaken, including the continued monitoring of the status of women in science by Unesco Institute for Statistics (UIS) or the annual reports “Education at a Glance” by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as well as field-related working groups and networking in order to collect data in a consistent manner. The majority of the international organizations have made clear statements about their discrimination policies (independently of their main field(s) of action), including the International Council for Science whose regulations are followed by the IAU. Gender equality at large is one of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which clearly calls for action related to science, technology and gender.

After highlighting the principle and power of asteroseismology for stellar physics, we briefly emphasize some recent progress in this research for various types of stars. We give an overview of high-precision high duty-cycle space photometry of OB-type stars. Further, we update the overview of seismic estimates of stellar parameters of OB dwarfs, with specific emphasis on convective core overshoot. We discuss connections between pulsational, rotational, and magnetic variability of massive stars and end with future prospects for asteroseismology of evolved OB stars.

The Working Group was created at the 25th IAU General Assembly in Sydney, Australia, in July 2003 by the IAU Executive Council as a Working Group of IAU Executive. The aims of the Working Group are to evaluate the status of women in astronomy through the collection of statistics over all countries where astronomy research is carried out; and to establish strategies and actions that can help women to attain true equality as research astronomers, which will add enormous value to all of astronomy.

The CoRoT and Kepler space missions have opened a new era in eclipsing binary research. While specifically designed for exoplanet search, they offer as by-products the discovery and monitoring of variable stars, in great majority eclipsing binaries (EB). The missions are therefore providing thousands of EB light curves of unprecedented accuracy (typically a few hundred parts per million, ppm), with regular sampling (from 1s to 29m), extending over time spans of months, and with a very high duty cycle (>90%).

Thanks to this excellent photometry, research topics as asteroseismology of EB components are quickly developing, and physical phenomena such as doppler boosting, theoretically predicted but extremely difficult to observe from the ground, have been unambiguously detected. We present the main properties of the Corot and Kepler EB samples and briefly review the highlights of the missions in this field.

Recent space observations with CoRoT and ground-based spectroscopy have shown the presence of different types of pulsations in OB stars. These oscillations could be due to acoustic and gravity modes, solar-like oscillations or even other pulsations of large growth rates. We present a first attempt at interpreting the latter as strange modes.

As part of a long term observational project, we are investigating the macroturbulent broadening in O and B supergiants (Sgs) and its possible connection with spectroscopic variability phenomena and stellar oscillations. We present the first results of our project, namely firm observational evidence for a strong correlation between the extra broadening and photospheric line-profile variations in a sample of 13 Sgs with spectral types ranging from O9.5 to B8.

The meeting started at 14h00. The president welcomed the participants to the business meeting of C27, and acknowledged the members of the Organizing Committee. Special thanks were expressed to the outgoing members: Conny Aerts, Peter Martinez, and Seetha Somasundaram.

The Organizing Committee of Commission 27 has decided to again provide a somewhat abbreviated bibliography as part of this triennial report, as astronomy-centered search engines and on-line publications continue to blossom. We focus on selected highlights in variable star research over the past three years. Further results can be found in numerous proceedings of conferences held in the time frame covered by this report.

Division V deals with all aspects of stellar variability, either intrinsic or due to eclipses by its companion in a binary system. In the case of intrinsic stellar variability the analysis of pulsating stars, surface inhomogeneities, stellar activity and oscillations are considered. For close binaries, classical detached eclipsing binaries are studied as well as more interacting systems, like contact and semi-detached binaries, or those with compact components, like cataclysmic variables and X-ray binaries, including the physics of accretion processes.

The meeting of the Working Group on Active B-type Stars consisted of a business meeting followed by a scientific meeting containing invited and contributed talks. The titles of the talks and their presenters are listed below. We plan to publish a series of articles containing summaries of these talks in Issue No. 39 of the Be Star Newsletter.

Seismic estimates of core overshoot have been derived from extensive high-precision photometric and spectroscopic ground-based (multisite) campaigns for five main-sequence B-type stars. For three of these, the ratio of the near-core rotation frequency to the surface rotation frequency could be estimated as well, from the identified oscillation modes. We summarise these seismic results obtained for B stars. Now that the technique of asteroseismology was proven to work for probing the interior of massive stars, we expect a drastic increase in the precision of the structure parameters from the space missions CoRoT and Kepler, as well as from currently ongoing ground-based campaigns, in the coming years.

Division V provides a joint forum for the study of stellar variability in all its manifestations, whether due to pulsation, surface inhomogeneities, evolutionary changes, or to eclipses and other phenomena specifically related to double and multiple stars.

The meeting started at 16h00. The president welcomed the 24 participants to the business meeting of Commission 27. After the approval of the agenda, she gave an overview of the activities of Commission 27 of the past three years.

In this review paper, we summarise the goals of asteroseismic studies of close binary stars. We first briefly recall the basic principles of asteroseismology, and highlight how the binarity of a star can be an asset, but also a complication, for the interpretation of the stellar oscillations. We discuss a few sample studies of pulsations in close binaries and summarise some case studies. This leads us to conclude that asteroseismology of close binaries is a challenging field of research, but with large potential for the improvement of current stellar structure theory. Finally, we highlight the best observing strategy to make efficient progress in the near future.

We report the major highlights of variable star research within the past three years. This overview is limited to intrinsically variable stars, because the achievements in variable star research stemming from binarity, or multiplicity in general, is covered by the summary report of Commissions 26 and 42.

Our group studies active early-type (OB) stars, with historical focus on classical Be stars, but extending in recent years to include Slowly Pulsating B-stars (SPB), Beta-Cephei stars, the strongly magnetic Bp stars, Luminous Blue Vairiable (LBV) stars, and B[e] stars. An overall goal is to understand the nature, origin, and consequences of this activity, in terms of both the stellar structure and evolution, as well as the distribution and dynamics of circumstellar material and mass outflows.

Division V, “Variable Stars”, consists of Commission 27, also called “Variable Stars” and Commission 42, “Close Binaries”. Thus the former deals with stars whose variations are intrinsic, whereas in the latter the variations are caused by the interactions between the components in the binary. It is evident that the definition of the Division is predominantly observational, and there may be cases where the assignment of an object to one of the two commissions might be in doubt (a recent somewhat related example was the first detection of an extra-solar planet, in 54 Pegasi, where intrinsic variability of the star in the form of high-order g modes was also initially suspected).

We tested a stepwise approach to combine photometry and spectroscopy for mode identification where we first used the photometric amplitude ratios to restrict the degree l, then did a spectroscopic mode identification, and finally fitted the photometric amplitudes to restrict the list of candidate modes. For the spectroscopic mode identification, we implemented an efficient multi-mode moment method variant. We conclude that this new variant works well, but that the photometric amplitudes are too model sensitive to do any additional mode discrimination.