The interaction between galaxies is believed to be the main origin of the peculiarities of galaxies. It can disturb not only the morphology but also the kinematics of galaxies. These disturbed and asymmetric features are the indicators of galaxy interaction. We study the velocity field of ionized gas in galaxy pairs based on MaNGA survey. Using the kinemetry package, we fit the velocity field and quantify the degree of kinematic asymmetry. We find that the fraction of high kinematic asymmetry is much higher for galaxy pairs with dp⩽30h−1kpc. Moreover, compared to a control sample of single galaxies, we find that the star formation rate is enhanced in paired galaxies with high kinematic asymmetry. For paired galaxies with low kinematic asymmetry, no significant SFR enhancement has been found. The galaxy pairs with high kinematic asymmetry are more likely to be real interacting galaxies rather than projected pairs.

We explore the Milky Way supershell GS242-03+37. We argue that the observed HI distribution can be explained as an expanding structure about 100 Myr old powered with a modest energy released by an OB association. The formation of star clusters has been triggered less than 30 Myr ago when the ISM density in the supershell increased due to the galactic differential rotation. The observed age sequence of young star clusters is related to the evolution of the column density during the supershell expansion.

Absorption line spectroscopy of foreground gas in the spectra of background quasars has revealed some clear cases where neutral gas is present and associated with dwarf galaxies. Spectroscopy of Lyα and low-ionization metal lines can be combined to derive neutral gas phase metallicities. The damped Lyα absorbers (DLAs) in quasar spectra are the clearest cases of absorption by predominantly neutral gas regions. Here we present some results on neutral gas phase metallicities for cases where the DLA is clearly associated with a dwarf galaxy. We find that the neutral gas phase metallicities in these systems are similar to those in other DLAs. We argue that there may be many unrecognized cases where a DLA is actually associated with a dwarf galaxy even though there is a luminous galaxy within 100 kpc of the quasar sightline.

We present Doppler images of the active dwarf star V1358 Ori using high-resolution spectra from the NARVAL spectropolarimeter mounted on the Bernard Lyot Telescope. The spectra were taken between 09-20 Dec, 2013 with a resolution of R=80000. Doppler imaging was carried out with our new generation multi-line Dopper imaging code iMap (Carroll et al. 2012). 40 individual photospheric lines were selected by line depth, temperature sensitivity and blends. Two data subsets were formed to get two consecutive Doppler images. Prominent cool spots at lower latitudes are found on both maps. At 0.5 phase there is a prominent equatorial feature on both maps. Weaker polar features can be seen on the first map, which somewhat diminishes for the second map. On the first image there is a cool surface feature at 30 degrees latitude which seems to fade greatly on the second map. Around 0.75 phase, a new spot seems to form. These changes suggest a rapid surface evolution. Spot displacements may also indicate surface differential rotation, which was derived by cross-correlating the two subsequent Doppler images (see e.g. Kővári et al. 2012). We fit the latitudinal correlation peaks with a sine-squared law. The fit suggests solar-type surface differential rotation with a shear parameter of α=0.02±0.02. The shear parameter fits the ${P_{{\rm{rot}}}} - |\alpha | $ diagram in Kővári et al. (2017) quite well.

It is well-known that there are two types of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs): short/hard and long/soft ones, respectively. The long GRBs are coupled to supernovae, but the short ones are associated with the so called macronovae (also known as kilonovae), which can serve as the sources of gravitational waves as well. The kilonovae can arise from the merging of two neutron-stars. The neutron stars can be substituded by more massive black holes as well. Hence, the topic of gamma-ray bursts (mainly the topic of short ones) and the topic of massive binaries, are strongly connected.

In this contribution, the redshifts of GRBs are studied. The surprising result - namely that the apparently fainter GRBs can be in average at smaller distances - is discussed again. In essence, the results of Mészáros et al. (2011) are studied again using newer samples of GRBs. The former result is confirmed by the newer data.

Astronomy’s heritage, comprised mainly of several million photographic plates (both images and spectra), extends backwards in time for many decades. It constitutes a unique and irreplaceable resource for research into long-term variations. Unfortunately, to date rather few of the plates can be accessed in digital formats and cannot therefore be used in modern research. That lack of use encourages the attitude that ‘old’ data have no value and might as well be destroyed. This Workshop discussed ways and means to avert such threats, and prioritised a list of actions that need to be taken as soon as possible.

The observed size-frequency distributions (SFDs) of the five major asteroid families in the Inner Main Belt (IMB), defined by Nesvorný (2015) using the Hierarchical Clustering Method (Zappala et al. 1990), are distinctly different and deviate significantly from the linear log-log relation described by Dohnanyi (1969). The existence of these differences in the SFDs, and the fact that the precursor bodies of the major families have distinctly different eccentricities and inclinations, provides an explanation for the observations that the mean sizes of both the family and the non-family asteroids are correlated with their mean proper eccentricities and anti-correlated with their mean proper inclinations. We deduce from this, and from the fact that the SFDs of the family and the non-family asteroids are almost identical, that the family and most of the non-family asteroids in the IMB have a common origin (Dermott et al. 2018).

Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) are a common feature between Active and Quiescent Galactic Nuclei; the study of these events is a very useful tool to probe phenomena that relate to the formation of an accretion disc or a jet. Also, the accretion rate at the beginning of the tidal flare is expected to be significantly super-Eddington and might result in high energy emission (in soft X-rays but sometimes up to the gamma regime, as in the the case of Swift J1644, see Komossa 2015). These events may even play an important role in the newborn field of the Multimessenger Astronomy. This work is set within this context. Indeed, it is a study of generation of Gravitational Waves (GWs) from the hot accreting torus resulting after a TDE. Since the torus has only formed recently, magnetic fields are not expected to be strong enough, so that the torus is likely to be unstable to the Papaloizou-Pringle Instability (PPI), producing a strongly varying mass quadrupole. Here, the study of the evolution of such tori is developed, using both analytical calculation and a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulation (SPH). In particular the goal of this work is to determine the GW waveform and to compute the characteristic strain of these GWs in order to see if they are detectable by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).

We determined zirconium abundance in the atmospheres of 327 red giant branch (RGB) stars in the globular cluster 47 Tuc. The 1D LTE abundances were obtained from the archival VLT GIRAFFE spectra, using 1D hydrostaticATLAS9 stellar model atmospheres and synthetic Zr I line profiles computed with theSYNTHE package. The average zirconium abundance determined in the sample of RGB stars, 〈[Zr/Fe]〉 = +0.38 ± 0.12, agrees well with zirconium abundances obtained at this metallicity in the Galactic field stars, as well as with those observed in other Galactic globular clusters.

We present scanning Fabry-Perot observations of different types of star-forming galaxies from apparently isolated LIRGs to equal mass interacting galaxies. We analyze the ionized gas kinematics, its relation with the morphology of each system and the location of SF regions for different systems.

We aim to analyse the co-added Herschel images of various categories of evolved stars in the LMC and SMC from the Herschel HERITAGE survey in order to identify, in a statistical sense, a cool historic dust mass component emitted by these sources. The fluxes derived from the co-added stacks can then be compared with those predicted by the GRAMS model grid in order to refine the DPRs estimated for the SMC and LMC.

The separation of the gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) into short/hard and long/soft subclasses, respectively, is well supported both theoretically and observationally. The long ones are coupled to supernovae type Ib/Ic - the short ones are connected to the merging of two neutron stars, where one or even both neutron stars can be substituted by black holes. These short GRBs - as merging binaries - can also serve as the sources of gravitation waves, and are observable as the recently detected macronovae. Since 1998 there are several statistical studies suggesting the existence of more than two subgroups. There can be a subgroup having an intermediate durations; there can be a subgroup with ultra-long durations; the long/soft subgroup itself can be divided into two subclasses with respect to the luminosity of GRBs. The authors with other collaborators provided several statistical studies in this topic. This field of the GRB-diversity is briefly surveyed in this contribution.

The origin of polarized emission from protoplanetary disks is uncertain. Three mechanisms have been proposed for such polarized emission so far, (1) grain alignment with magnetic fields, (2) grain alignment with radiation gradients, and (3) self-scattering of thermal dust emission. Aiming to observationally identify the polarization mechanisms, we present ALMA polarization observations of the 0.87 mm dust continuum emission toward the circumstellar disk around HD 142527 with a spatial resolution of ∼0.2 arcsec as shown in Ohashi et al. (2018). We confirm that the polarization vectors in the northern region are consistent with self-scattering because of a flip of the polarization vectors. Furthermore, we show that the polarization vectors in the southern region are consistent with grain alignment by magnetic fields, although self-scattering cannot be ruled out. To understand these differences between the polarization mechanisms, we propose a simple grain size segregation model: small dust grains ( $\mathbin{\lower.3ex\hbox{$\buildrel<\over {\smash{\scriptstyle\sim}\vphantom{_x}}$}} $ 100 microns) are dominant and aligned with magnetic fields in the southern region, and middle-sized (∼100 microns) grains in the upper layer emit self-scattered polarized emission in the northern region. The grain size near the middle plane in the northern region cannot be measured because the emission at 0.87 mm is optically thick. However, it can be speculated that larger dust grains ( $\mathbin{\lower.3ex\hbox{$\buildrel>\over {\smash{\scriptstyle\sim}\vphantom{_x}}$}} $ cm) may accumulate near this plane. These results are consistent with those of a previous analysis of the disk, in which large grain accumulation and optically thick emission from the northern region were found. This model is also consistent with theories where smaller dust grains are aligned with magnetic fields. We find that the magnetic fields are toroidal, at least in the southern region.

The Magellanic Clouds offer the opportunity to obtain a spatially resolved view of external galaxies at reduced metallicity with no distance ambiguity. Our ALMA observations of the active star-forming region N83C in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) revealed subparsec-scale molecular structures in 12CO and 13CO (2-1) emission Muraoka et al. (2017). We found strong CO peaks associated with Young Stellar Objects(YSOs) and derived a typical gas density of ∽104 cm−3 and gas temperature of 40-60 K from the excitation analysis. The high gas density and temperature are presumably due to the effect of the HII region under the low-metallicity environment. We have found that the column density ratios N(CI)/N(CO) are generally high throughout the cloud compared with the Galaxy, ranging from 0.2 to 2.0. A peak of the ratio is observed toward a CO peak associated with a massive protostar.

We investigate the sample of 16 the youngest radio galaxies with measured kinematic ages and available X-ray data from high-resolution Chandra or XMM-Newton observations. We characterize the accretion properties and derive the jet kinetic luminosities for our sources. We found high accretion rates (>1% Eddington) and very high jet production efficiency for all the sources from our sample.This, along with the fact that the analyzed objects seem over-luminous in radio on the fundamental plane for the black hole activity, implies also that the radiative efficiency of the compact lobes is much higher than in the case of the evolved radio galaxies.

Dust evolution in disks around young stars is a key ingredient for the global disk evolution and accompanying planet formation. The mutual sticking of initially small grains is not straightforward and can be hampered by several processes. This includes dust grain bouncing, fragmentation, electrostatic repulsion and fast drift to the central star. In this study we aim at theoretical modeling of the dust coagulation coupled with the dust charging and disk ionization calculations. We show that the electrostatic barrier is a strong restraining factor to the coagulation of micron-size dust. While the sustained turbulence helps to overcome the electrostatic barrier, dust fluffiness limits this opportunity. Coulomb repulsion may keep a significant fraction of m dust in large regions of protoplanetary disks.

After successfully retrieving the known rotation period P = 42.076 d in the Herbig Ae star HD 101412 using spectroscopic signatures of accretion tracers (Schöller et al. 2016), we have studied magnetospheric accretion in the Herbig Ae SB2 system HD 104237 using spectroscopic parameters of the He i 10830, Paγ, and He i 5876 lines, formed in the accretion region. Employing 21 spectra obtained with ISAAC and X-shooter, we found that the temporal behavior of these parameters can be explained by a variable amount of matter being accreted in the region between the star and the observer. Using a periodogram analysis, we examined the possible origin of the accretion flow in HD 104237 and considered the following four scenarios: matter flows from the circumbinary envelope, mass exchange between the system’s components, magnetospheric accretion (MA) from the disk onto the star, and fast high-latitude accretion from a disk wind onto a weakly magnetized star. Based on a correlation analysis, we were able to show that the primary component is responsible for the observed emission line spectrum of the system. Since we do not find any correlation of the spectroscopic parameters with the phase of the orbital period (P ≍ 20 d), we can reject the first two scenarios. We found a variation period of about 5 d, which likely represents the stellar rotation period of the primary and favors the MA scenario.

The recent measurements of internal variations of helium in Galactic and extragalactic Globular Clusters (GCs) set binding constraints to the models of formation of Multiple Populations (MPs) in GCs, and gave rise, at the same time, to crucial questions related with the influence of the environment on MP formation as well as with the role played by GCs in the early galactic formation. We present the most recent estimates of helium enrichment in the main populations of a large sample of Galactic and extragalactic GCs.

Many astrophysical and galaxy-scale cosmological problems require a well determined gravitational potential which is often modeled by observers under strong assumptions. Globular clusters (GCs) surrounding galaxies can be used as dynamical tracers of the luminous and dark matter distribution at large (kpc) scales. A natural assumption for modeling the gravitational potential is that GCs accreted in the same dwarf galaxy merger event move at the present time on similar orbits in the host galaxy and should therefore have similar actions. We investigate this idea in one realistic Milky Way like galaxy of the cosmological N-body simulation suite Auriga. We show how the actions of accreted stellar particles in the simulation evolve and that minimizing the standard deviation of GCs in action space, however, cannot constrain the true potential. This approach known as ‘adaptive dynamics’ does therefore not work for accreted GCs.

Galactic microquasars have been detected at very-high-energies (VHE) (> 100 GeV) and the particle acceleration mechanisms that produce this emission are not yet well-understood. Here we investigate a hadronic emission scenario where cosmic-rays (CRs) are accelerated in magnetic reconnection events by the turbulent, advected-dominated accretion flow (ADAF) believed to be present in the hard state of black hole binaries. We present Monte Carlo simulations of CR emission plus γ-γ and inverse Compton cascades, injecting CRs with a total energy consistent with the magnetic energy of the plasma. The background gas density, magnetic, and photon fields where CRs propagate and interact are modelled with general relativistic (GR), magneto-hydrodynamical simulations together with GR radiative transfer calculations. Our approach is applied to the microquasar Cygnus X-1, where we show a model configuration consistent with the VHE upper limits provided by MAGIC collaboration.