With the present level of accuracy it may be necessary to use space borne atomic clocks to directly generate TCG, and to start addressing the limitations in the coordinate time transformations.

We discuss the scientific potential of the future space astrometric missions.

Recent data have radically altered the X-ray perspective on cooling flow clusters. X-ray spectra show that very little of the hot intra-cluster medium is cooler than about 1 keV, despite having short cooling times. In an increasing number of cooling flow clusters, the lobes of a central radio source are found to have created cavities in the hot gas. Generally, the cavities are not overpressured relative to the intra-cluster gas, but act as buoyant bubbles of radio emitting plasma that drive circulation as they rise, mixing and heating the intra-cluster gas. All this points to the radio source, i.e., an active galactic nucleus, as the heat source that prevents gas from cooling to low temperatures. However, heating due to bubbles alone seems to be insufficient, so the energetics of cooling flows remain obscure. We briefly review the data and theory supporting this view and discuss the energetics of cooling flows.

Our starting point is a formal linear stochastic differential equation of first order (higher order equations can be transformed to systems of these) where I, a, W are stochastic functions with and analogously for a and W. I, a, and W are allowed to depend on the element ω of a set Ω in which a probability measure is defined in the usual way (see e.g. Doob, 1953; de Witt-Morette, 1981). To get a solution of eq.(1) for the mean intensity we treat the problem according the Reynolds averaging technique in the usual manner : The stochastic equation is changed into an infinte hierarchical system of equations for the correlations.

We present initial results of a new campaign of simulations focusing on the interaction of planetary winds with stellar environments using Adaptive Mesh Refinement methods. We have confirmed the results of Stone & Proga (2009) that an azimuthal flow structure is created in the planetary wind due to day/night temperatures differences. We show that a backflow towards the planet will occur with a strength that depends on the escape parameter. When a stellar outflow is included, we see unstable bow waves forming through the outflow's interaction with the planetary wind.

Cosmic phenomena occur in the remote regions of space where in-situ observations are not possible. For proper understanding of these phenomena laboratory experiments are essential, but the in-situ observations of magnetospheric plasma provides even a better background to test various hypothesis of cosmic interest. This is because the ionospheric-magnetospheric plasma and the solar wind are the only cosmic plasmas accessible to extensive in-situ observations and experiments.

Flares are a fact of life for stars in the cool half of the H-R diagram. The production of magnetic fields and the consequent dynamic interactions of field and plasma give rise to observational phenomena which span the electromagnetic spectrum. Stellar flares have an impact not only on the stellar atmosphere but also the stellar environment, which can include forming and already formed planets. This talk gave a brief review of our current state of understanding of stellar flares, highlighting some of the main unanswered questions by a panchromatic approach. It also emphasized commonalities between observations and analysis of stellar flares and other types of transient and variable sources.

A photoelectric search is presented for light from a smooth intergalactic background in the Coma cluster of galaxies.

We present the results of a photometric study of RR Lyrae variables in the field of the globular cluster M55. We have discovered nine new RR Lyrae stars, increasing the number of known variables in this cluster to 15 objects. Five of the newly discovered variables belong to Bailey type RRc and two to type RRab. Two background RRab stars are probable members of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. Fourier decomposition of the light curves was used to derive basic properties of the present sample of RR Lyrae variables. From an analysis of the RRc variables we obtain a mean mass of M = 0.53 ± 0.03 M⊙, luminosity log L = 1.75 ± 0.01 L⊙, Teff = 7193 ± 27 K, and helium abundance Y = 0.27 ± 0.01. We also derive the value of the color excess for M55 to be equal to E(B − V) = 0.11 ± 0.03. We estimate the values of the visual apparent distance moduli to be 13.65 ± 0.11 from RRab stars and 13.91 ± 0.08 from RRc stars. The light curves of three of the RRc variables exhibit changes in amplitude of over 0.1 mag on time scales of less than a week, rather short for the Blazhko effect, but with no evidence for another radial pulsational frequency. However, we do detect other periodicities which are clearly visible in the light curve after removing variations with the first overtone radial frequency. This is strong evidence for the presence of nonradial pulsations, a behavior common for 8 Scuti stars, but not yet observed among RR Lyr variables.

As we celebrate the International Year of Astronomy, we have been working on four different projects with the goal of making astronomy more accessible to people with special needs. These projects are 1) an astronomy book and web site for blind people, 2) an open source software for people with motor disabilities, 3) a planetarium program for the visually impaired and 4) educational material for intellectually disabled people.

Based on Docobo’s method for the calculation of orbits of visual binaries, an algorithm is presented for the calculation of short-period orbits when observational data comprise radial velocities and polar coordinates. The method is applied to some examples.

Photometric and/or spectroscopic variability on time scales of approximately 0.2 to 2 days has been observed in over 40 Be stars, and is suspected in many more. This paper reviews the observational aspects of this phenomenon: both surveys and studies of individual objects. This phenomenon is not easy to study and interpret: (i) the time scale is inconvenient (ii) there have been very few simultaneous photometric and spectroscopic studies of individual objects (iii) the photometric variability is small, often irregular and superimposed on longer-term variability and (iv) the spectroscopic variability is usually observed as absorption line profile variability, which requires special instrumentation. For these and other reasons, there is not yet a universal agreement about the nature of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, it deserves further intensive study, not only because it is common, but also because in one or two stars, there is evidence that the rapid variability may be related (causally perhaps?) to the longer-term variability in these stars - variability whose ultimate cause is still not known.

We present new UV, visual and Hα photometry obtained with the WFPC2 of NGC 330, NGC 1818, NGC 2004 and NGC 2100, four young populous clusters in the MCs. We present observational evidence for a degree of convective core overshoot in excess of that currently applied in standard models.

The concordance Cold Dark Matter model for the formation of structure in the Universe, while remarkably successful at describing observations on large scales, has a number of problems on galactic scales. The Milky Way and its satellite system provide a key laboratory for exploring dark matter (DM) in this regime, but some of the most definitive tests of local DM await microarcsecond astrometry, such as will be delivered by the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM Planetquest). I discuss several tests of Galactic DM enabled by future microarcsecond astrometry.

Some magnetic early B-type stars display Hα emission originating in their Centrifugal Magnetospheres (CMs). To determine the rotational and magnetic properties necessary for the onset of emission, we analyzed a large spectropolarimetric dataset for a sample of 51 B5-B0 magnetic stars. New rotational periods were found for 15 stars. We determined physical parameters, dipolar magnetic field strengths, magnetospheric parameters, and magnetic braking timescales. Hα-bright stars are more rapidly rotating, more strongly magnetized, and younger than the overall population. We use the high sensitivity of magnetic braking to the mass-loss rate to test the predictions of Vink et al. (2001) and Krtička (2014) by comparing ages t to maximum spindown ages tS, max. For stars with M* < 10 M⊙ this comparison favours the Krtička recipe. For the most massive stars, both prescriptions yield t ≪ tS, max, a discrepancy which is difficult to explain via incorrect mass-loss rates alone.

A revival over the past two decades in planetary nebula (PN) morphological studies springs from a combination of factors, including the advent of wide-area, high dynamic range detectors; the growing archives of high resolution images from the X-ray to the sub-mm; and the advent of sophisticated models of the co-evolution of PNe and their central stars. Yet the story of PN formation from their immediate precursors, the AGB stars, is not yet fully written. PN morphology continues to inspire, provide context for physical interpretation, and serve as an ultimate standard of comparison for many investigations in this area of astrophysics. After a brief review of the remarkable successes of PN morphology, I summarize how this tool has been employed over the last half-decade to advance our understanding of PNe.

With modern large scale spectroscopic surveys, such as the SDSS and LSS-GAC, Galactic astronomy has entered the era of millions of stellar spectra. Taking advantage of the huge spectroscopic database, we propose to use a “standard pair" technique to a) Estimate multi-band extinction towards sightlines of millions of stars; b) Detect and measure the diffuse interstellar bands in hundreds of thousands SDSS and LAMOST low-resolution spectra; c) Search for extremely faint emission line nebulae in the Galaxy; and d) Perform photometric calibration for wide field imaging surveys. In this contribution, we present some results of applying this technique to the SDSS data, and report preliminary results from the LAMOST data.

This is a brief report on the highlights of this informal session attended by over 50 symposium participants for three hours on the day preceeding the symposium.

We propose that many of the denser dust clouds represent transient stages between the initiation of gravitational collapse of ordinary interstellar clouds by passage through a spiral galactic shock and the appearance of a stellar association. The interstellar gas is not processed at too rapid a rate (1) because the time spent between galactic shocks is appreciably longer than the free-fall collapse time of a typical dust cloud, and (2) because only a small fraction of the total mass of gas of a given collapsing cloud is converted into stars – the rest is presumably redispersed by various dynamical processes which accompany the formation of massive stars. We note that the residue of atomic hydrogen observed to exist in dark dust clouds is compatible with the interpretation that they are transient objects whose lifetimes are not longer than ~ 107 yr.

We report on the first results of our ground-survey of H2O masers to establish a list of suitable candidates for space-VLBI observations. Due to the large VSOP/HALCA baselines and its limited sensitivity only very strong and compact sources will be detected. The best candidates from this survey will be part of The VSOP Survey which intends to observe a large number of continuum and maser sources. This systematic and uniform survey, of a large number of sources, will be invaluable in determining the properties of the sub-milliarcsecond emission from maser sources.