We present new carbon-enhanced stars identified from the third public release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, SDSS-DR3. We have generated synthetic spectra with varying carbon abundances, and compare them with the SDSS spectra. We have also performed a preliminary analysis of s-process enhancement in several SDSS carbon-enhanced stars. Spectral features that are sensitve to stellar luminosity and temperature have also been explored. These methods will be applied to the large set of public SDSS data, as well as to the forthcoming data from SEGUE, the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Evolution, in order to study carbon enhancement at different metallicities, the fraction of s-process enhancement that occurs in carbon-enhanced stars, and possibly isotopic carbon abundances and nitrogen abundances.

We obtained velocity dispersion and line strength index measurements for 69 faint early–type galaxies in the core of the Coma cluster. The full sample spanning $-22.0 < M_R < -17.5$ mag includes 36 dE/dS0 galaxies. We examine the $L$–$\sigma$ relation and compare it to that of bright ellipticals from the literature. The slope defined by the faint early–type galaxies including dEs/dS0s is significantly shallower, $L \propto \sigma^{2.01\pm0.36}$, than that defined by luminous elliptical galaxies, $L \propto \sigma^{4}$. Moreover, there is no evidence for a change of slope at the typical division between dwarfs and ordinary elliptical galaxies at $M_B=-18$ mag; rather, the change in slope appears at $M_B=-20.5$ mag. We show that rotation in the fainter galaxies cannot be solely responsible for the change of slope in the $L$–$\sigma$ relation. We also plot metallicity and age-dependent line strength indices in diagnostic diagrams and find that our galaxies span a wide range in both age and metallicity.

The results obtained during the first three years of operation of INTEGRAL will be reviewed. Over 30 GRBs have been localised by the INTEGRAL burst alert system (IBAS) and the coordinates distributed. The follow-up observations with XMM-Newton and large telescopes have led to many interesting results. A comparison will also be made between the sensitivities of INTEGRAL and SWIFT.

The future planning working group of the optical and infrared astronomy community of Japan completed its two-year study to yield a concrete plan for ground based telescopes and space missions for the coming decades. The R&D issues towards the realization of extremely large telescopes reported in this paper include a novel optical design, development of new ceramic mirrors, high precision grinding approach to reduce the involved cost and time for fabricating aspheric segmented mirrors, and conceptual studies of instruments.

The present paper is essentially a slightly updated version of the paper presented in the workshop “Instrumentation for Extremely Large Telescopes” held at Ringberg Castle, Bavaria, 25-29 July 2005.

Occulting focal plane masks for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph (TPF-C) could be designed with continuous gray scale profile of the occulting pattern such as $1-{\rm sinc}^2$ on a suitable material or with micron-scale binary transparent and opaque structures of metallic pattern on glass. We have designed, fabricated and tested both kinds of masks. The fundamental characteristics of such masks and initial test results from the High Contrast Imaging Test bed (HCIT) at JPL are presented.

Using H I absorption alone, we attempt to separate H I absorption lines in quasar spectra into two categories; HDLs (Higher Density Lines) and LDLs (Lower Density Lines), and we discuss the difference in their physical properties. We deblend and fit all H I lines with Voigt profiles, and make an unbiased sample of H I lines covering a wide column density range ($12 < \log N_{HI} < 19$ cm$^{-2}$). To reduce the influence of line blending, we simultaneously fit several Lyman series lines. As a result of a two-point correlation analysis, we found that higher column density H I lines are clustering at $\Delta v < 200$ km s$^{-1}$, while lower ones at $\Delta v < 100$ km s$^{-1}$. We define HDLs as H I lines with $15<\log N_{HI} < 19$ cm$^{-2}$ and all H I lines within $\pm$200 km s$^{-1}$ of a line with $\log N_{HI} > 15$ cm$^{-2}$, and LDLs as others with $12 < \log N_{HI} < 15$ cm$^{-2}$. We found that the HDLs have smaller minimum $b$-values for a given column density than the LDLs. This difference is successfully reproduced by our hydrodynamic simulation. The LDLs seem to be cool or shock-heated diffuse IGM gas, while the HDLs are likely to be cooler dense gas near to galaxies.

This paper presents a look at ongoing investigations into the strategies needed to characterize the orbits of observed exoplanets in an optimal manner. Also introduced is an efficient manner of the selection of possible orbits consistent with the observation of an exoplanet. Specifically, this work looks at the ability to conclude that a planet's orbit is resident in the habitable zone (HZ) on the basis of two sequential observations. The role of the range of possible semi-major axes is introduced.

The particle acceleration and the non-thermal radiation in the magnetospheres of collapsing stars are considered. The collapsing stars can be powerful sources of the high-energy charged particles and the non-thermal radiation bursts. These bursts can be observed by means of modern astronomical instruments.

The LTE abundances of sulfur (S) were explored in the sample of 15 metal-poor stars with the metallicity range of −4<[Fe/H]<−1.5, based on the equivalent widths of the S I(1) 9212 and 9237 Å lines measured on high-resolution spectra, which were observed by the Keck I HIRES. Combining our results and those of Takada-Hidai et al. (2005), we found that the behavior of [S/Fe] against [Fe/H] shows a nearly flat trend in the range of metallicity down to [Fe/H]∼−4.

Setting constraints on the evolutionary history of a galaxy requires informations about the age and metallicity of its stellar content. However, outside the Local Group of galaxies representative surveys on the age and metallicity of stellar populations in galaxies of different types (e.g. luminosity, environment) can only be performed with photometry. The latter requires special care in order to overcome the age- metallicity degeneracy of broad band colors. Combining optical and near-infrared observations of globular clusters is a powerful tool in this respect, using the different sensitivity of broad band colors regarding both parameters. Based on Single Stellar Population (SSP) models we derive the cumulative age distribution for various globular cluster systems and compare it to simulated systems with a known age distribution. So far this method has been tested successfully on various early-type galaxies, revealing a second generation of globular clusters in two galaxies in a sample of eight with convincing reliability.

This report is a general introduction on Chinese large telescope projects. It includes the ongoing project Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), and three projects which have reviewed by Chinese government recently: Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical (radio) Telescope (FAST); Space Solar Telescope (SST); Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT). These three projects have finished their feasibility studies and development of key technologies. They are very likely to be approved by the Chinese government in 2006. Besides these large telescope projects, the site survey in Western China for large telescopes in optical, infrared, sub-millimeter and millimeter astronomy, the preliminary study on Chinese future giant optical/infrared telescopes, and a future extremely large wide field telescope are also briefly introduced.

The cosmological variability of $\alpha$ is probed from individual observations of pairs of Fe II lines. This procedure allows a better control of the systematics and avoids the influence of the spectral shifts due to ionisation inhomogeneities in the absorbers and/or non-zero offsets between different exposures. Applied to the Fe II lines of the metal absorption systems at $z_{\rm abs}=1.839$ in Q1101–264 and at $z_{\rm abs}=1.15$ in HE0515–4414 observed by means of UVES at the ESO-VLT, it provides $\Delta\alpha/\alpha = (0.4\pm1.5_{\rm stat})\times10^{-6}$. The result is shifted with respect to the Keck/HIRES mean $\Delta\alpha/\alpha = (-5.7\pm1.1_{\rm stat})\times10^{-6}$ (Murphy et al. 2004) at a high confidence level (95%). Full details of this work are given in Levshakov et al. (2005).

Large volumes of CCD imaging data that will become available from wide-field cameras at telescopes such as the CFHT, SUBARU, VST, or VISTA in the near future are highly suitable for systematic distance surveys of early-type galaxies using the Surface Brightness Fluctuation (SBF) method. For the efficient processing of such large data sets, we are developing the first semi-automatic SBF analysis pipeline named SAPAC. After a brief description of the SBF method we discuss the image quality needed for a successful distance measurement and give some background information on SAPAC.

Our group at Princeton University is developing the Shaped-Pupil Coronagraph (SPC) as a solution to the high contrast imaging requirements for NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder mission. At the heart of the SPC is a specially designed shaped mask at the pupil plane, and a star occulter at the image plane. We report a measurement of $10^{5}$ contrast at 4 $\lambda/D$ and $10^{6}$ at 7 $\lambda/D$, with no adaptive optics corrections. This contrast is maintained at laser wavelengths of 532, 594, and 632nm, and for broadband light from at least 550nm to 750nm. The contrast is almost certainly limited by wavefront aberrations in the mirrors. Indeed, the level and general structure of the speckles in the high contrast region is consistent with statistical simulations of our optics.

Recent observations have suggested that the true energy release of GRBs is potentially far less than previously thought. This is due to beaming, a signature of which is a broadband break in the power-law decay of the afterglow emission. Taking these results we have constructed a basic distance estimator, which may be useful as a diagnostic tool for the large amount of GRBs without a spectroscopically measured redshift.

The project of the Russian 6m BTA telescope reconstruction was cancelled in 2004 because of financial problems. In the beginning, it was planned to replace the existing 42 ton parabolic main mirror by a new one of 8m diameter using the Zerodur blank provided by the Germain company Schott.

Russia still possesses a high potential in the development of large-scale optics and mechanics. A new 25m telescope with the segmented mirror was the subject of wide speculations. Strange as it may seem, the country with the world largest territory has no good site for a large astronomical observatory. Any project of the national observatory is therefore faced with the necessity of looking for a foreign partner. We are also studying the possibility of joining one of the large international projects, including the ESO projects OWL, ALMA and others. At the same time, work on a few Russian space astronomical missions is going on well.

To determine ages of individual (field) stars, composition, mass and distance should be known accurately, which is usually not the case. An alternative way is to use turn-off colours of field star populations. This method led in the past to ages significantly higher than those of globular clusters of the same metallicity. We show that colour-based relative ages between the field and cluster population indicate that they have similar if not equal ages. First steps using large samples of stars from SDSS are presented.

The preliminary results of abundance analysis are presented for extremely metal-poor carbon star HD 112869 = TT CVn = CGCS 3319. The radial velocity was found to be −137.7 km s−1. Our LTE abundance analysis supports an extremely low metallicity for TT CVn, [Fe/H] = −3.2, and a significant overabundance of carbon and neutron-capture elements. The 12C/13C ratio in the atmosphere of HD 112869 is high.

The Lyot coronagraph can achieve significant on-axis starlight suppression when equipped with a notch filter image mask. Notch filter masks are placed in the focal plane and have small intricate features. They must be manufactured using nanofabrication techniques, when designed for coronagraphs operating at visible or near infrared wavelengths. This process often involves depositing an opaque material onto a glass substrate whereby a pattern is then etched. The substrate however can be a source of internal reflections and chromatic aberrations that limit the coronagraph's dynamic range and broadband performance. We present theoretical and experimental work on a new series of image masks that do not require the support of a glass substrate. We show that by adding periodic bar structures of appropriate spacing, it may be possible to manufacture a Silicon binary notch filter mask that is “free-standing”.

We are conducting a survey of 44 early-type galaxies in the Fornax Cluster using the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telecope: the ACS Fornax Cluster Survey. We briefly describe the survey, the selection of the target galaxies and some of the scientific objectives.