Our new compilation of interferometric CO data suggests that nuclear and extended molecular gas disks are common in the final stages of mergers. Comparing the sizes of the molecular gas disk and gas mass fractions to early-type and late-type galaxies, about half of the sample show similar properties to early-type galaxies, which have compact gas disks and low gas mass fractions. We also find that sources with extended gas disks and large gas mass fractions may become disk-dominated galaxies.

We propose and preliminarily implement a data-mining based platform to assist experts to inspect the increasing amount of spectra with low signal to noise ratio (SNR) generated by large sky surveys. The platform includes three layers: data-mining layer, data-node layer and expert layer. It is similar to the GalaxyZoo project and it is VO-compatible. The preliminary experiment suggests that this platform can play an effective role in managing the spectra and assisting the experts to inspect a large number of spectra with low SNR.

To extend the molecular gas measurements to typical L* star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at z ∼ 1.5 − 3, we have observed CO emission for five strongly-lensed galaxies selected from the Herschel Lensing Survey. The combined sample of our L* SFGs with CO-detected SFGs at z >1 from the literature shows a large spread in star formation efficiency (SFE). We find that this spread in SFE is due to variations of several physical parameters, primarily the specific star formation rate, but also stellar mass and redshift. An increase of the molecular gas fraction (fgas) is observed from z ∼ 0.2 to z ∼ 1.2, followed by a quasi non-evolution toward higher redshifts, as found in earlier studies. We provide the first measure of fgas of z >1 SFGs at the low-stellar mass end between 109.4 < M∗/M⊙ < 109.9, which shows a clear fgas upturn.

Currently it is possible to estimate the rotation profile of a star that harbours a planet in an orbit such that it eclipses the star periodically. During one of these transits, the planet may occult a spot on the photosphere of the star, causing small variations in its light curve. By detecting the same spot in a later transit, it is possible to estimate the stellar rotation period. Here we present the results of this model for the case of the star Kepler-63, which has a planet in an orbit with high obliquity. This means that the planetary eclipse occults many latitude bands of the star, from near the equator to the poles. The results show that Kepler-63 has differential rotation of 0.133 rd/d and a relative differential rotation of 11.4%.

Galactic white dwarf binaries will be an abundant source of gravitational waves in the mHz frequency band of space-based detectors such as eLISA. A few thousand to a few tens of thousands of these systems will be individually resolvable by eLISA, depending on the final detector configuration. The remaining tens of millions of close white dwarf binaries will create an unresolvable anisotropic foreground of gravitational waves that will be comparable to the instrument noise of eLISA at frequencies below about a mHz. Both the resolvable binaries and the foreground can be used to better understand this population. Careful choice of the initial orientation of eLISA can mitigate this foreground in searches for other sources.

We report observations of new outburst of Centaur (60558) 174P/Echeclus, using Suprime-Cam of Subaru tele-scope. The outburst was detected by Jager on May 30, 2011 (Jaeger et al., 2011). We made several follow-up observations for this outburst with 1m telescope at Mt. Lemon Optical Astronomy Observatory located in US and 60cm telescope at Sobaeksan Optical Astronomy Observatory in Korea. The very first presence of coma around (60558) 2000 EC98 has been detected by Choi and Weissman (2006) on 2005 December 30.50 UT with the Palomar 5m telescope. Soon after, the object was given the periodic comet designa-tion 174P/Echeclus. We will present the characterstics and discuss the reason of this recursive outburst.

We explore the connection between the black hole mass and its relativistic jet for a sample of radio-loud AGN (z < 1), in which the relativistic jet parameters are well estimated by means of long term monitoring with the 14m Metsähovi millimeter wave telescope and the Very Long Base-line Array (VLBA). NIR host galaxy images taken with the NOTCam on the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) and retrieved from the 2MASS all-sky survey allowed us to perform a detailed surface brightness decomposition of the host galaxies in our sample and to estimate reliable black hole masses via their bulge luminosities. We present early results on the correlations between black hole mass and the relativistic jet parameters. Our preliminary results suggest that the more massive the black hole is, the faster and the more luminous jet it produces.

We present recent results on Karl Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) deep S-band (2-4 GHz) observation towards a protocluster 4C23.56 at redshift z ∼ 2.5. The protocluster 4C23.56 is known to have a significant over density (∼ 5 times) of star-burst galaxies selected to be Hα line-bright by a Subaru narrow band imaging. Now we have found 25 HAEs associated with the protocluster. These starburst HAEs are likely to become massive ellipticals at z = 0 in a cluster. Various other galaxy populations also reside in this field and the fact makes the field very unique as a tool to understand galaxy formation in a over dense region. Subsequent deep 1100-μm continuum surveys by the ASTE 10-m dish have discovered that several submillimeter bright galaxies (SMGs) coincide with HAEs, suggesting HAEs undergoing dusty starbursts. As star formation rates (SFRs) of HAEs might have been underestimated, we use radio being resistant to dust extinction. We investigate the correlation between SFR1.4 GHz and SFRHα for radio index α = 0.8 to see if the correlation holds for the sources and to check the number of dusty star forming galaxies. Our final results will allow us to evaluate quantitatively how the galaxy formation channel may be different under the condition of over-densities.

AGN jets are detected via their radio and/or gamma-ray emissions while the accretion disks are detected by their optical and UV radiation. Observations of the radio and optical luminosities show a strong correlation between the two luminosities. However, part of this correlation is due to the redshift or distances of the sources that enter in calculating the luminosities from the observed fluxes and part of it could be due to the differences in the cosmological evolution of luminosities. Thus, the determination of the intrinsic correlations between the luminosities is not straightforward. It is affected by the observational selection effects and other factors that truncate the data, sometimes in a complex manner [Antonucci (2011) and Pavildou et al. (2010)]. In this paper we describe methods that allow us to determine the evolution of the radio and optical luminosities, and determine the true intrinsic correlation between the two luminosities. We find a much weaker correlation than observed and sub-linear relations between the luminosities. This has a significant implication for the jet and accretion disk physics.

In 2007-2011 searches were conducted for mineralogical and geochemical studies of the soil in the region of fall down of a bright fireball EN171101 “Turyi Remety“ matter in Perechyn district of Transcarpathian. In the assumed location of the fall of a meteorite material for analysis was taken from the bottom of streams of Transcarpathian Mountains. In this matter we have been found numerous small magnetic spheres (microspherul) and fused segments, which have enough large sizes - up to 5 mm in diameter, which probably are fragments of the Turyi Remety meteoroid. One of the known signs of fireballs are sand-sized magnetic balls (by diameter 0.1-1.0 mm), which are often found in the magnetic concentrate fraction. This small balls, together with fragments of fused iotsit (FeO) are formed during the ablation of the meteoroid, and their sizes decreases during the motion of the meteoroid in the Earths atmosphere. From the east to the west, the radius of the balls in the study area decreased from an average of 0.7-0.5 mm to 0.1-0.3 mm. The sizes of such balls, as glowing molten particles of the meteoroid, are in good agreement with calculations based on the energy loss of the Turyi Remety meteoroid. This confirms the cosmic origin of these found small balls. Pre-calculated physical parameters of the Turyi Remety meteoroid are the velocity, mass, kinetic energy, the resistance force during ablation, the average fireball particle radius along trajectory path of a meteoroid fragments depending from the mass and size. Rapid mass loss of the meteoroid in more than 10 times, stronger, shorter ablation and damping fireball at the high altitude say about instability and the participation of the meteoroid gas in ablation. Perhaps the presence of ice, and other fireball gases in the meteoroid composition shows that its composition was close to comet one or to a chondrite with ice (gas hydrates). Especially likely gaseous hydrates of heavy gases such as CO2, H2S, hydrocarbons (propane, butane, etc.).

We report two cases of Star-Planet Interaction (SPI) in two systems with hot Jupiters: HD 189733 and HD 17156. We used HST-COS to study the FUV variability of HD 189733 after the planetary eclipse. With the support of MHD simulations, we evince that material is likely evaporating from the planet and accreting onto the parent star. This produces a hot spot on the stellar surface, co-moving with the planetary motion and responsible of the X-ray and FUV variability at peculiar planetary phases. In HD 17156, which hosts a hot Jupiter in an eccentric orbit, we observed an enhancement of the X-ray activity at the passage of its planet at the periastron. The origin can be due to magnetic reconnection between the planetary and stellar magnetic fields, or due to material tidally stripped from the planet and accreting onto the star.

The early phase of coalescence of supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) from their host galaxies provides a guaranteed source of low-frequency gravitational wave (GW) radiation by pulsar timing observations. Nowadays, SMBHBs are ubiquitous in the nuclei of galaxies. A latest sample of close galaxy pairs has been released from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data. A binary population synthesis (BPS) approach has been applied to study the characteristics of clusters and galaxies. Here we report how BPS, using SDSS results, can be used to determine the GW radiation from SMBHBs. In this study we show numerical results under the assumption that SMBHBs formed through the merger of two galaxies and give the waveform evolution using post-Newtonian approximation methods. Based on the sensitivity of the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA) and Square Kilometer Array (SKA) detectors, we show that the value of strain amplitude h can be changed from about 10−14 to 10−15 during the observation of 20 years, which can be considered as a precise evolution.

We present a new galaxy survey simulation package, which combines the power of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling with a robust and adaptable model of galaxy evolution. The aim of this code is to aid in the characterization and study of new and existing galaxy surveys. In this paper we briefly describe the MCMC implementation and the survey simulation methodology and associated tools. A test case of this full suite was to constrain the evolution of the IR Luminosity Function (LF) based on the HerMES (Herschel SPIRE) survey of the Spitzer First Look Survey field. The initial results are consistent with previous studies, but our more general approach should be of wider benefit to the community.

The nearby radio galaxy M87 offers a unique opportunity for exploring the connection between γ-ray production and jet formation at an unprecedented linear resolution. However, the origin and location of the γ-rays in this source is still elusive. Based on previous radio/TeV correlation events, the unresolved jet base (radio core) and the peculiar knot HST-1 at >120 pc from the nucleus are proposed as candidate site(s) of γ-ray production. Here we report our intensive, high-resolution radio monitoring observations of the M87 jet with the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA) and the European VLBI Network (EVN) from February 2011 to October 2012. During this period, an elevated level of the M87 flux is reported at TeV with VERITAS. We detected a remarkable flux increase in the radio core with VERA at 22/43 GHz coincident with the VHE activity. Meanwhile, HST-1 remained quiescent in terms of its flux density and structure at radio. These results strongly suggest that the TeV γ-ray activity in 2012 originates in the jet base within 0.03 pc (projected) from the central supermassive black hole.

We investigate the environmental dependence of the mass-metallicty (MZ) relation and its connection to galaxy stellar structures and morphologies. In our studies, we analyze galaxies in massive clusters at z ∼ 0.4 from the CLASH (HST) and CLASH-VLT surveys and measure their gas metallicities, star-formation rates, stellar structures and morphologies. We establish the MZ relation for 90 cluster and 40 field galaxies finding a shift of ∼ − 0.3 dex in comparison to the local trends seen in SDSS for the majority of galaxies with logM < 10.5. We do not find significant differences of the distribution of 4 distinct morphological types that we introduce by our classification scheme (smooth, disc-like, peculiar, compact). Some variations between cluster and field galaxies in the MZ relation are visible at the high mass end. However, obvious trends for cluster specific interactions (enhancements or quenching of SFRs) are missing. In particular, galaxies with peculiar stellar structures that hold signs for galaxy interactions, are distributed in a similar way as disc-like galaxies - in SFRs, masses and O/H abundances. We further show that our sample falls around an extrapolation of the star-forming main sequence (the SFR-M∗ relation) at this redshift, indicating that emission-line selected samples do not have preferentially high star-formation rates (SFRs). However, we find that half of the high mass cluster members (M∗ > 1010M⊙) lie below the main sequence which corresponds to the higher mass objects that reach solar abundances in the MZ diagram.

Today has been known for a considerable number of cases, the explosion of large meteoroids in Earth's atmosphere. This is confirmed by the data of registrations of fireballs by devices and the results of measurements in the atmosphere of bright light flashes by photodiodes Corporation “Sandia Laboratories", which were installed on geostationary satellites of the United States, and also by data of measurements of acoustic-gravitational waves from the thermal explosions of meteoroids [ReVelle D.O. Historical detection of atmospheric impacts by large bolides using acoustic-gravity waves, Near-Earth Objects, Ed. Remo J. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 882, 284-302, 1997]. The work [Brown P., Spalding R.E., ReVelle D.O. et al. The flux of small near-Earth objects colliding with the Earth, Nature 420, 314-316, 2002.] shows the results of processing the observations of flashes of large meteoroids in Earth's atmosphere, obtained with the help of geostationary satellites of the United States. Over 8.5 years (from February 1994 to September 2002) 300 such events were registered. On July 6, 2002 r over the Mediterranean Sea a bright fireball was registered. The energy of the meteoroid explosion that caused the phenomenon of the car, was 26 kilotons of TNT [Brown et al., 2002]. We believe that this energy refers to the height of the full bracking of the meteoroid. At a speed of 20.3 km/s adopted by the authors, body mass at this height is 5 × 108 g, and when entering the Earth's atmosphere, it was about 7 × 108 g. Based on the obtained values of the mass, we conclude that the exploded meteoroid, causing a phenomenon of the fireball was a fragment of the comet nucleus. In processing the density of the body were taken 1 g/cm3 and the initial velocity (~30 km/s).

The power of micro-arcsecond (μas) astrometry is about to be unleashed. ESA's Gaia mission, now headed towards the end of the first year of routine science operations, will soon fulfil its promise for revolutionary science in countless aspects of Galactic astronomy and astrophysics. The potential of Gaia position measurements for important contributions to the astrophysics of planetary systems is huge. We focus here on the expectations for detection and improved characterization of ‘young’ planetary systems in the neighborhood of the Sun using a combination of Gaia μas astrometry and direct imaging techniques.

Star clusters are among the fundamental astrophysical objects used in setting the local distance scale. Despite its crucial importance, the accurate determination of the distances to the Magellanic Clouds (SMC/LMC) remains a fuzzy step in the cosmological distance ladder. The exquisite astrometry of the recently launched ESA Gaia mission is expected to deliver extremely accurate statistical parallaxes, and thus distances, to the SMC/LMC. However, an independent SMC/LMC distance determination via main sequence fitting of star clusters provides an important validation check point for the Gaia distances. This has been a valuable lesson learnt from the famous Hipparcos Pleiades distance discrepancy problem. Current observations will allow hundreds of LMC/SMC clusters to be analyzed in this light.

Today, the most common approach for star cluster main sequence fitting is still by eye. The process is intrinsically subjective and affected by large uncertainties, especially when applied to poorly populated clusters. It is also, clearly, not an efficient route for addressing the analysis of hundreds, or thousands, of star clusters. These concerns, together with a new attitude towards advanced statistical techniques in astronomy and the availability of powerful computers, have led to the emergence of software packages designed for analyzing star cluster photometry. With a few rare exceptions, those packages are not publicly available.

Here we present OCAAT (Open Cluster Automated Analysis Tool), a suite of publicly available open source tools that fully automatises cluster isochrone fitting. The code will be applied to a large set of hundreds of open clusters observed in the Washington system, located in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. This will allow us to generate an objective and homogeneous catalog of distances up to ~ 60 kpc along with its associated reddening, ages and metallicities and uncertainty estimates.

One of the most characteristic features of galaxy clusters is the so-called “red sequence” (RS) of early-type galaxies. Since these galaxies are, in general, devoid of gas and dust, their red colors are mainly a consequence of their passive nature. However, the physical mechanisms responsible for quenching their star formation, thus originating the RS, are poorly understood. Environmental effects should play a significant role in the formation of the RS by transforming the observed galaxy properties from late to early-type ones. In this respect, we have initiated a KMOS program aimed at studying the kinematical structure of cluster galaxies at 0.8 < z < 1.7 in an effort to disentangle the physical mechanisms responsible for cluster galaxy evolution and the formation of the RS.