This work presents some observations during the period of the Whole Heliosphere Interval (WHI) of the effects of interplanetary (IP) structures on the near-Earth space using three sets of observations: magnetic field and plasma from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite, ground-based cosmic ray data from the Global Muon Detection Network (GMDN) and geomagnetic indices (Disturbance storm-time, Dst, and auroral electrojet index, AE). Since WHI was near minimum solar activity, high speed streams and corotating interaction regions (CIRs) were the dominant structures observed in the interplanetary space surrounding Earth. Very pronounced geomagnetic effects are shown to be correlated to CIRs, especially because they can cause the so-called High-Intensity Long-Duration Continuous AE Activity (HILDCAAs) - Tsurutani and Gonzalez (1987). At least a few high speed streams can be identified during the period of WHI. The focus here is to characterize these IP structures and their geospace consequences.

With the goal of understanding the three-dimensional structure of the solar corona and inner heliosphere during the “Whole Heliosphere Interval” (WHI), we have developed a global MHD solution for Carrington rotation (CR) 2068. Our model, which includes energy transport processes, such as coronal heating, conduction of heat parallel to the magnetic field, radiative losses, and the effects of Alfvén waves, is capable of producing significantly better estimates of the plasma temperature and density in the corona than have been possible in the past. With such a model, we can compute emission in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray wavelengths, as well as scattering in polarized white light. Additionally, from our heliospheric solutions, we can deduce magnetic field and plasma parameters along specific spacecraft trajectories. We have made detailed comparisons of both remote solar and in situ observations with the model results, allowing us to: (1) Connect these disparate sets of observations; (2) Infer the global structure of the inner heliosphere; and (3) Provide support for (or against) assumptions in the MHD model, such as the empirically-based coronal heating profiles.

The fast solar wind analysis during the Whole Heliospheric Interval (Carrington Rotation no. 2068: March 20 - April 16, 2008) is herein presented. The analysis is based on the data recorded by space experiments aboard the ACE and SOHO missions. The high-speed streams in the solar wind were determined by their main parameters: duration, maximum velocity, velocity gradient. The fast solar wind was also analyzed during the preceding and following Carrington Rotations, nos. 2067 and 2069, respectively. The main properties of the rapid streams and their solar sources were analysed in terms of the present solar minimum phase. The geospace response to the fast streams was evaluated using the geomagnetic index dynamics. A comparative analysis of the high-speed streams registered during Whole Heliospheric Interval with the ones determined during Whole Sun Month was also made.

We examined EUV movies of the Sun during the period of the Whole Heliospheric Interval (WHI) campaign of 20 March–16 April 2008, searching for indications of eruptive events. Our data set was obtained from EIT on SOHO, using its 195 Å filter, and from EUVI on the two STEREO satellites, using their 171 Å, 195 Å, 284 Å, and 304 Å filters. Here we present a table showing results from our preliminary search.

We will present the relevant activities performed during the International Heliophysical Year (IHY) program during the 5 year period 2004 - 2008. The IHY was a major international effort that involved the deployment of new instrumentation, new observations from the ground and in space, and a strong education component. Under the United Nations Office for Outer Space program called Basic Space Science Initiative (UNBSSI), instrument arrays have been deployed to provide global measurements of heliophysical phenomena. As a result, significant scientific and educational collaborations emerged between the organizing groups and the host country teams. In view of the great successes achieved by the IHY during these years, we propose to continue the highly successful collaboration with the UN program to study the universal processes in the solar system that affect the interplanetary and terrestrial environments, and to continue to coordinate the deployment and operation of new and existing instrumentation arrays aimed at understanding the impacts of Space Weather on Earth and the near-Earth environment. To this end, we propose a new program, the International Space Weather Initiative (ISWI). The ISWI strongly complements the International Living With a Star (ILWS) program, providing more attention nationally, regionally, and internationally for the ILWS program. Based on a three-year program activity, the ISWI would provide the opportunity for scientists around the world to participate in this exciting quest to understand the effect of space disturbances on our Earth environment.

Infrared astronomy has come into its own over the last decade. Based on mature detector technology and sophisticated instrumentation it is contributing exciting science in many fields of astrophysics. Stellar evolution is a field that has long been dominated by ultraviolet and optical work, but one that has benefited from a strongly increasing contribution from the infrared (IR) and sub-millimeter (sub-mm) domains. In particular, spectroscopy in these domains holds the promise to enable important advances through quantitative analysis of individual stars and stellar systems.

For over a hundred years, optical spectroscopy has been the main tool to study stellar structure and evolution. Photospheric spectra of the electronic transitions of atoms and ions are used to determine the temperature and elemental abundance. Beyond atomic and ionic lines, only the electronic transitions of a few simple molecules (C2, CN, H2O, TiO, CH, etc.) appear in the optical photospheric spectra. With the recent development of infrared and submm spectroscopy, a wide range of molecules have been observed, specially in cool atmospheres of red giants and brown dwarfs. We also realize that beyond the photosphere, a stellar system consists of chromosphere, corona, and stellar wind. Both young and evolved stars possess extensive circumstellar regions and the atoms, molecules, and solid particles in this environment radiate a wide range of lines and bands observable at infrared and submm wavelengths.

During the past decade, there has been a revolution in the availability of multi-wavelength astronomical surveys. From the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), astronomical research based on publicly accessible datasets is becoming standard practice in the community. Beginning with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) mission, infrared surveys have played a critical role in stellar astronomy by identifying cool and dusty stars worthy of spectroscopic characterization. IRAS' four photometric bands at 12, 25, 60, and 100 μm were ideal for detecting dusty circumstellar material. All-sky surveys like IRAS reveal the brightest members of each class of rare objects, optimizing their follow-up strategy. The case of debris disks around main sequence stars demonstrates this utility. IRAS detected dust disks around four nearby stars, Beta Pictoris, Fomalhaut, Epsilon Eridani, and Vega. The “Fabulous Four” remain the best studied debris disks, despite hundreds of additional examples discovered by the Spitzer Space Telescope. In the nearly 30 years since IRAS was launched, its highly reliable catalog of just 250000 sources, modest by modern standards, with arcminute scale resolution and 0.3 - 1 Jy sensitivity, has generated over 10,000 references in ADS. This is a success story by any measure.

We present Spitzer Space Telescope spectra of 147 stars (R~64 - 128, λλ = 5 - 35 μm, S/N~100) covering most spectral and luminosity classes within the HR diagram. The spectra are available from the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) and from the first author's webpage (http://web.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/ardila/Atlas/). The Atlas contains spectra of ‘typical’ stars, which may serve to refine galactic synthesis models, study stellar atmospheres, and establish a legacy for future IR missions, such as JWST.

The life cycles of massive stars have a major impact on the evolution of galaxies, while in turn, position in galaxy has a major impact on the efficiency and type of star formation which occurs in a molecular cloud (see e.g. Luna et al. 2006). However, exactly how massive stars form, on what timescales, and how they shape their environments during this active and energetic phase is poorly understood.

The entrainment of molecular material through a mixing layer along the walls of a HH jet beam has been modeled analytically (Cantó & Raga 1991; Stahler 1994) and numerically (Taylor & Raga 1995; Lim et al. 1999). However, when full radiative jet simulations are carried out, the molecular, environmental material remains within a dense shell which follows the shape of the leading bow shock. Because of this, no molecular material reaches the outer boundary of the jet beam, and therefore no “side-entrainment” of molecular gas into the fast jet beam takes place.

Circumstellar disks are an intrinsic part of star formation and are also where planets form, migrate, and where the materials capable of producing life-bearing worlds are produced. The most flamboyant signatures of the presence of disks are at infrared through millimeter wavelengths, where thermal emission from dust dominates the system light. The discovery and characterization of the emission from such disks has been a major activity for ground-based observatories and space missions (IRAS, ISO, MSX, AKARI, and Spitzer), and continues with the newest generation of infrared (IR) capabilities.

High resolution infrared spectroscopy is the key technique to look at the inner regions of protoplanetary disks. As molecular hydrogen is an inefficient emitter, CO gas is the single most important molecular probe of the disk. The energy gaps of the vibrationally excited levels (ΔE > 3000 K) and the critical density required to keep the molecules in the excited state (nc ~ 1010cm−3) match well to the physical condition of the inner regions of protoplanetary disks. In order to resolve the vibrational lines of different rotational states, a spectral resolving power of λ/Δλ > 10000 is necessary; or even higher (> 30000 –100000), if we would like to fully resolve the gas kinematics. Scoville et al. (1980) provided the fundamentals of the excitation mechanisms, which is essential for the interpretation of the vibrational transitions of CO, and pioneered the study of the circumstellar environment with infrared CO lines in the observation of BN (Scoville et al. (1983)). The bandhead emission of CO at 2.3 μm from young stars was unambiguously attributed to the circumstellar disks by Carr (1989) and Najita et al. (1996), because the gas kinematics matches well to what is expected from Keplerian rotation. Since then, the gas kinematics have been extensively used to shed light on peculiar disk structures, such as the inner truncation (Brittain et al. 2003), the outer truncation (Najita et al. 2008), and the gap (van der Plas et al. 2008; though this is an oxygen forbidden line).

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).

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.

T Tauri stars (TTSs) are young (~few Myr) late type stars that have only recently emerged from their natal molecular cloud material to become visible at optical wavelengths. It is now generally accepted that accretion of circumstellar disk material onto the surface of a TTS is controlled by a strong stellar magnetic field (e.g. see review by Bouvier et al. 2007). The stellar field appears critical for explaining the rotational properties of TTSs (Bouvier et al. 2007, Herbst et al. 2007) and may also play a critical role in driving the outflows seen from many of these sources (e.g. Shang et al. 2007, Mohanty & Shu 2008). As a result, there is a great deal of interest in measuring the magnetic field properties of TTSs (e.g. Johns–Krull 2007, Donati et al. 2008). In particular, disk locking theories predict that an equilibrium is established where the disk is trunctated at or close to corotation and the stellar rotation rate depends only on the (assumed) dipolar magnetic field strength, the stellar mass, radius, and the mass accretion rate in the disk (see Bouvier et al. 2007).

High-resolution (HR) near-IR spectroscopy is opening new windows in our understanding of several hot topics of modern planet, stellar and extragalactic astrophysics, and it will have a huge impact in the JWST and ALMA era and beyond. The much reduced extinction at these wavelengths allows to pierce the dust embedding those objects which are heavily obscured in the optical. Moreover, at high redshifts several spectral features, commonly exploited when studying local galaxies, are shifted into the near-IR. However, despite its scientific potential, the field of HR IR spectroscopy and its related science is developing very slowly, because of the lack of optimized instruments with the necessary combination of spectral resolution and coverage.

The fields of millimeter and sub-millimeter interferometry have been developing for more than 30 years. At millimeter wavelengths the most important interferometers are the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA), the Plateau de Bure Interferometer (PdBI), and the Nobeyama Millimeter Array (NMA). At sub-millimeter wavelenghts, the most powerful interferometer is the SubMillimeter Array (SMA, for a detailed description, see Ho et al. 2004).

The U.S./German Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA, Figure 1) is a 2.5-meter infrared airborne telescope in a Boeing 747-SP flying in the stratosphere at altitudes as high as 45,000 feet where the atmospheric transmission averages ≥ 80% throughout the 0.3 - 1600 μm spectral region. SOFIA's first-generation instruments include broadband imagers, moderate resolution spectrographs capable of resolving broad features due to dust and large molecules, and high resolution spectrometers suitable for kinematic studies of molecular and atomic gas lines at km s−1 resolution. These and future instruments will enable SOFIA to make unique contributions to studies of the physics and chemistry of stellar evolution for many decades. Science flights will begin in 2010. A full operations schedule of at least 100 flights per year will begin in 2014 and will continue for 20 years. The SOFIA Guest Investigator (GI) program, open to investigators worldwide, will constitute the major portion of the SOFIA observing program.

METIS, the Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph, is currently in its phase A study as one of the candidate first-light instruments for the European Extremely Large Telescope. METIS will feature several observational modes, ranging from diffraction limited imaging in L, M and N-bands to high-resolution Integral Field spectroscopy for the L and M-bands. METIS in its current design gives sensitivities similar to Spitzer in imaging and low-resolution spectroscopy and with its high-resolution spectrograph will provide unprecedented line sensitivity. The design of METIS is optimized for both galactic science cases (e.g. conditions in the early solar system, formation and evolution of proto-planetary disks and properties of exoplanets) and extragalactic science cases (e.g. the growth of Supermassive Black Holes). METIS will require a high-order adaptive optics (AO) system to meet its scientific goals, both to provide correction for atmospheric turbulence as well as reduce the impact of wind shake, leading to a residual image motion of 3 - 5 mas rms. METIS is expected to feature both an internal Single Conjugate AO system as well as an external Laser Tomography AO system. The challenges for the METIS AO system are mainly in the broad correction range, an excellent image stability required for coronagraphy and in providing a high sky coverage to be available for as many science targets as possible. An additional challenge for METIS is the need to compensate for composition turbulence, mainly in the form of fast fluctuations in water vapor concentration. Water vapor fluctuations impact the performance of METIS in several ways: Atmospheric dispersion causes a broadening of the point-spread function, both in the science channel and the wavefront channel, but can be corrected using a Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector. Variations in the water vapor composition cannot be corrected this way and are currently estimated to give a residual image motion of ≤10 mas rms. This effect can, especially for coronagraphy, not be neglected. Chromatic optical path difference errors, caused by changes in the index of refraction along the path through the atmosphere were found to be negligible in the case of METIS due to attenuation by the outer scale (at typical values of 25 m). Chromatic anisoplanatism is the effect that the light at different wavelengths travels through a slightly different light path through the atmosphere and can be–at least partly–corrected. The last effect is composition turbulence, mainly caused by fast (> 1 Hz) fluctuations in the water vapor content. Based on data for ALMA and radiometer probes, this leads to a maximum loss in Strehl ratio between 5 and 10%. This mainly has an impact on coronagraphy and the METIS AO team is actively investigating ways to compensate also water vapor turbulence. The main challenge is currently obtaining reliable data on the distribution and magnitude of precipitable water vapor fluctuations.