By applying Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to solar magnetic synoptic maps in cycle 21-23 obtained with Wilcox Solar Observatory we derived analytical expressions for two principal components and their summary curve of solar magnetic field oscillations defined by dipole magnetic sources. In this paper we extrapolate backwards three millennia the summary curve describing solar activity and compare it with the relevant historic data. The extrapolated summary curve shows a remarkable resemblance to the sunspot and terrestrial activity reported in the past millennia: the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715), Wolf minimum (1200), Oort minimum (1010-1050), Homer minimum (800-900 BC), the medieval warm period (900-1200), the Roman warm period (400-10BC). We note that Sporer minimum (1460-1550) derived from the increased abundance of isotope Δ14C is likely produced by a strong increase of galactic cosmic rays caused by a supernova Vela Junior occurred in the Southern hemisphere.

The Sun is an active star and its magnetic field fluctuates from a fraction of a second to a long period of time. The solar wind, CME, solar prominence, solar flares, solar particle and solar filament are the direct result of solar magnetic activity effects on the interplanetary space, Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere. The intensity of irruption of these phenomena from the Sun’s surface depends upon its phases. The extreme events affect technology both in space and on the ground.The data obtained from series of observations can help to predict solar activities and safekeeping to the space technology. In this study the cross correlations between IMF Bz, solar wind velocity(Vsw) and interplanetary electric field(Ey) with AE and SYM-H are studied. The results reveal that strong geomagnetic disturbances have high impact on the components of space weather than weak disturbances have.

Matter in neutron star cores reaches extremely high densities, forming states of matter that cannot be generated in the laboratory. The Equation of State (EOS) of the matter links to macroscopic observables, such as mass M and radius R, via the stellar structure equations. A promising technique for measuring M and R exploits hotspots (burst oscillations) that form on the stellar surface when material accreted from a companion star undergoes a thermonuclear explosion. As the star rotates, the hotspot gives rise to a pulsation, and relativistic effects encode information about M and R into the pulse profile. However the burst oscillation mechanism remains unknown, introducing uncertainty when inferring the EOS. I review the progress that we are making towards cracking this long-standing problem, and establishing burst oscillations as a robust tool for measuring M and R. This is a major goal for future large area X-ray telescopes.

We present observational results of the submillimeter H2O and SiO lines toward a candidate high-mass young stellar object Orion Source I using ALMA. The spatial structures of the high excitation lines at lower-state energies of >2500 K show compact structures consistent with the circumstellar disk and/or base of the northeast-southwest bipolar outflow with a 100 au scale. The highest excitation transition, the SiO (v=4) line at band 8, has the most compact structure. In contrast, lower-excitation transitions are more extended than 200 au tracing the outflow. Almost all the line show velocity gradients perpendicular to the outflow axis suggesting rotation motions of the circumstellar disk and outflow. While some of the detected lines show broad line profiles and spatially extended emission components indicative of thermal excitation, the strong H2O lines at 321 GHz, 474 GHz, and 658 GHz with brightness temperatures of >1000 K show clear signatures of maser action.

On 5-6 Aug. 2011 two short-time consecutive M-class solar flares led to profile of multiple Forbush Decreases showing the possible interaction of long-time passing of ICME.

We monitor a sample of CEMP-no stars using the CFHT and SALT telescopes to gain additional knowledge about the possible binarity of these stars. This information is valuable for each individual star, and additionally it could be used to further constrain their binary fraction. We find two new CEMP-no binaries and four additional CEMP-no stars that show some indication of radial velocity variations, resulting in a CEMP-no binary fraction of ~20%.

We describe existing research infrastructures relevant for space weather and open issues of space weather research including the need for sustainable observation networks and for high-quality data products as basis for model development. The local relevance in Europe for studies of the ionosphere at high latitude is described. We propose as possible a way forward to sustain space weather research in Europe to establish a European research infrastructure project for space weather research and observations.

We describe the characteristics and the capabilities of the laboratory facility, COSmIC, that was developed at NASA Ames to generate, process and analyze interstellar, circumstellar and planetary analogs in the laboratory. COSmIC stands for ’Cosmic Simulation Chamber’ and is dedicated to the study of neutral and ionized molecules and nanoparticles under the low temperature and high vacuum conditions that are required to simulate various space environments such as diffuse interstellar clouds, circumstellar outflows and planetary atmospheres. Recent results obtained using COSmIC will be highlighted. In particular, the progress that has been achieved in the domain of the diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) and in monitoring, in the laboratory, the formation of circumstellar dust grains and planetary atmosphere aerosols from their gas-phase molecular precursors. Plans for future laboratory experiments on interstellar and planetary molecules and grains will also be addressed, as well as the implications of the studies underway for astronomical observations and past and future space mission data analysis.

A superconductor of paired protons is thought to form in the core of neutron stars soon after their birth. Minimum energy conditions suggest that magnetic flux is expelled from the superconducting region due to the Meissner effect, such that the neutron star core retains or is largely devoid of magnetic fields for some nuclear equation of state and proton pairing models. We show via neutron star cooling simulations that the superconducting region expands faster than flux is expected to be expelled because cooling timescales are much shorter than timescales of magnetic field diffusion. Thus magnetic fields remain in the bulk of the neutron star core for at least 106 − 107yr. We estimate the size of flux free regions at 107yr to be ≲ 100m for a magnetic field of 1011G and possibly smaller for stronger field strengths.

In 1539 the Italian Giovanni Paoli, better known as Juan Pablos, began operating in Mexico City the first printing press that existed in the New World. The first books he printed were religious texts, vocabularies of some indigenous languages of Mexico, and compilations of ordinances and laws. In 1556 followed the Sumario compendioso de las cuentas, a text of arithmetic and algebra that was the first American mathematics book. A year later, he printed the Physica Speculatio by friar Alonso de la Veracruz, a text of Natural Philosophy that dealt with Aristotelian works such as Physics, On the Heavens, and Meteorology. As part of this book, was included the text of geocentric astronomy written during the thirteenth century by the Italian mathematician Giovanni Campano de Novara, entitled Tractatus de Sphaera, where the author discussed, from a geometric perspective, the cosmic structure and the stellar distribution. No doubt this is the first astronomical treatise that was published in the entire American continent, which is why it is emphasized here.

Back-diffusion is the phenomenon by which random walkers revisit binding sites on a lattice. This phenomenon must occur on interstellar dust particles, slowing down dust-grain reactions, but it is not accounted for by standard rate-equation models. Microscopic kinetic Monte Carlo models have been used to investigate the effect of back-diffusion on reaction rates on interstellar dust grains. Grain morphology, size, and grain-surface coverage were varied and the effects of these variations on the magnitude of the back-diffusion effect were studied for the simple H+H reaction system. This back-diffusion effect is seen to reduce reaction rates by a maximum factor of ∼5 for the canonical grain of 106 binding sites. The resulting data were fit to logarithmic functions that can be used to reproduce the effects of back-diffusion in rate-equation models.

In this paper we will present our investigations on the characteristics of geomagnetic storms deduced from direct and proxy observations for the years 1601–2016 AD. We show that we could infer epoch of reversal of solar polar magnetic fields from geomagnetic data. Such an inference is done back to the 18th century using geomagnetic and Aurora observations. We could also infer secular changes in the intensity of geomagnetic storms for the past 415 years.

Publications of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), such as Proceedings of IAU Symposia and Colloquia, contain biographical notes and papers as well as obituaries. Of great value are also the death announcements in the IAU Information Bulletins that contain the only biographical data known for about 200 astronomers. The kind of data given in these announcements varied over time. References to these data can be found in the Biographical Index of Astronomy. Recently the printed announcements were replaced by entries in the on-line IAU membership database.

Ring−like sources of 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission were discovered a decade ago with the European VLBI Network. In the past years we have been incessantly working to understand the nature of these rings. In general, the methanol rings do not coincide with H II regions nor they show 22 GHz water maser emission. Here, we present a proper motion study over a time baseline up to 10.5 years for the first sub-sample of methanol maser rings. Our findings suggest that in three targets G23.207−00.377, G23.389+00.185, and G23.657−00.127, such rings form in outflows or even in winds close to the central sources, and the masers trace slow proper motions of a few km s−1 typically.

At large distance scales, space exploration in the last decades has significantly helped in better locating the boundaries of the Heliosphere and outlining its shape as well as in probing the various plasma domains that separate the inner heliospheric region from the interstellar one. At shorter distance scales, a fleet of spacecraft has been probing the outer and inner Solar System plasma with a high level of detail.

This monitoring, complemented by space- and ground-based observations of processes relevant to the Heliosphere, has pointed out a series both of intrinsic and extrinsic perturbations that characterise the physical state of heliospheric plasmas both at small and large spatial scales and on short and long temporal scales.

By means of concept maps that schematise the association among concepts, in this work we will present a new domain ontology for the definition and characterisation of Heliospheric Weather and Climate.

Hii regions are the sites of massive star formation and are the archetypal tracers of spiral arms. Because of their short lifetimes (<10 Myr) their abundances provide a measure of the nuclear processing of many stellar generations. Here we review our ongoing efforts to explore the metallicity structure of the Galactic disk by observing radio recombination line (RRL) and thermal radio continuum emission toward Hii regions. The RRL-to-continuum ratio provides an accurate measure of the electron temperature which is used as a proxy for metallicity. Since collisionally excited lines from metals (e.g., O, C) are the main coolant in Hii regions, the thermal electron temperature is well correlated with metallicity (e.g., [O/H]). We determine Hii region distances from maser parallax measurements when possible; otherwise we use kinematic distances. Such radio diagnostics of Hii regions yield an extinction free tracer to map the metallicity distribution across the entire Galactic disk.

A statistical study of the glitch population and the behavior of the glitch activity across the known population of neutron stars is presented. A constant ratio between the glitch activity and the spin-down rate $\dot{\nu }_{\rm {g}}$/|$\dot{\nu }$| = 0.010 ± 0.001 is consistent with the behavior of all rotation-powered pulsars and magnetars. This relation is dominated by large glitches (Δν ≳ 10 μ Hz), which occur at a rate directly proportional to |$\dot{\nu }$|. The only exception are the rotation-powered pulsars with the highest values of |$\dot{\nu }$|, such as the Crab pulsar and PSR B0540–69, which exhibit a much smaller glitch activity, intrinsically different from each other and from the rest of the population. This contribution is based on the work done by Fuentes et al. (2017) “The glitch activity of neutron stars”, accepted for publication in A&A.

Radiation environment of near-Earth space is one of the most important factors of space weather. Space Monitoring Data Center of Moscow State University provides operational monitor and forecast of radiation conditions both at Geostationary Orbits (GEO) and at Low Earths Orbits (LEO) of the near-Earth space using data of recent space missions (Vernov, CORONAS series) and current (Lomonosov, Meteor-M, Electro-L) ones. Internet portal of Space Monitoring Data Center of Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics of Lomonosov Moscow State University (SINP MSU - [swx.sinp.msu.ru]) provides possibilities to monitor and analyze the space radiation conditions in the real time mode together with the geomagnetic and solar activity including hard X-ray and gamma-emission of solar flares.

The diffusion and photoprocessing of molecules within interstellar ices has been verified experimentally but often not fully included in astrochemical models. With models that consider photodissociation, binary reactions, and diffusion for molecules on the surface and in bulk ice, we explored the chemistry of interstellar and circumstellar ices in gravitationally contracting low-mass starless and prestellar cores, and a protostellar envelope.

Results. Photoprocessing gradually converts mixed H2O and CO ices into CO2 and allows for a late synthesis of icy organic species. Different layers within a single icy mantle favor the synthesis different species. Deuterium-rich molecules are concentrated on the outer surface of ice. Formation of organic molecules in bulk ice lowers their average deuterium content. The abundances of major icy species can be changed by about 25-50 % because of ice photoprocessing. Inter-layer diffusion of icy species allows sequential evaporation in protostellar envelopes, which occurs over a prolonged period.

Braking indices are used to describe the evolution of pulsars rotation, and can offer insights into the braking mechanism that dominates the slow down. Here we discuss the main difficulties associated with measuring braking indices and the complexity of interpreting these measurements. Considering recent braking index measurements on pulsars with large and regular glitches, we comment on the significant effects that the loosely coupled superfluid inside pulsars might have on their spin evolution.