This paper gives a short description and interpretation of some solar magneto-hydrodynamical and plasma phenomena, based mainly on work by the writer and his collaborators (for an extended review see Kaplan et al. 1974).

The magnetic field is considered as the main factor responsible for a number of manifestations of solar activity. At the photospheric level active regions are displayed as plages, i.e., bright areas, seen near the limb. This means that the temperature gradient in plages is smaller than in the undisturbed photosphere. The decrease in gradient is a result of an increase of convective transport of energy.

A few years ago Fowler (1972) published a paper in which he proposed two ‘desperate explanations’ for the solar neutrino problem. Desperation continues to be characteristic of the subject, for, in spite of many investigations over recent years, there is still no unambiguously successful model satisfying all the observational features of the Sun and giving a predicted neutrino count rate below the Davis (1972) experimental limit.

The U.K. Schmidt telescope is one of three independent ‘observatories’ now on Siding Spring Mountain near Coonabarabran, and is operated by the United Kingdom Science Research Council. The telescope has been fully operational since September 1973. So far we have taken about 800 astronomical plates, about half being for the main IllaJ Survey and half for other scientific programmes. The latter have mostly been taken when the moon or mediocre seeing have prevented us working on the Survey.

In this paper we report that the available data on the measured pulsed fraction of X-rays from the Crab Nebula between the energies 0.7 and 300 keV indicate that it is no longer necessary to postulate an intrinsic change in the pulsar spectral index near 30 keV. Furthermore the spectral flattening which is evident at low energies can be entirely attributed, within the precision of the available statistics to the destruction of time coherence of the pulse structure by the scattering action of interstellar dust grains.

The third UHURU catalogue of X-ray sources lists 64 sources at galactic latitudes higher than 20°, many of which have been identified with galaxies and clusters of galaxies. One of the best criteria for identifying a cluster of galaxies with an X-ray source is the extended nature of the X-ray source. Table I is a compilation of all clusters of galaxies known to be within the boundaries of X-ray error boxes. Not all have measured X-ray angular sizes (see column 3). Since the southern sky has been inspected too (Vidal 1975a), we believe that this list may represent a complete sample (down to the sensitivity of the UHURU satellite and the completeness of the Abell catalogue and the southern survey). Column 1 gives the optical identification, column 2 the 3U designation, column 3 the X-ray angular radius, column 4 the radio spectral index (see below), column 5 the redshift (corrected for galactic rotation) and column 6 the X-ray luminosities assuming the Hubble law. Numbers in parentheses give the references for the entries. When no such references are given, the data have been taken from Kellogg et al. (1973) and Bancall (1974).

During the last few years, a new type of radio object has appeared in the literature: this is the Early Type Emission Line Star, or ETELS for short. These objects are possibly the most interesting radio object discovered since the pulsars. They are certainly more easily understood, since an explanation of their emission processes probably does not involve any ‘strange’ physics but only simple gas dynamics and thermal bremsstrahlung.

In recent years two 408 MHz surveys of the northern sky have been made to study the large-scale, low-surface-brightness features of the galactic background such as the loops and spurs (Haslam et al. 1970; Haslam et al. 1974). These surveys were designed to make maps down to the confusion limits of the telescopes used and to provide as far as practicable accurate calibration of the temperature scale and zero level for large-scale features. This work is complementary to the work of the large array telescopes; these telescopes can provide high resolution detail but they have lower surface brightness sensitivity, and have problems in determining the low-order terms which define the large-scale structure. The Parkes 408 MHz sourthern survey continues this work using the 64-m telescope to complete the coverage of the sky to the south pole. The project is a joint venture between the Max-Planck-Institut and CSIRO. For the southern survey it was felt desirable to measure the linear polarization distribution, besides making an accurate average temperature map in left-hand circular polarization (which is insensitive to variations of ionospheric Faraday effects). The previous surveys did not include linear polarization measurements.

This paper is a preliminary report on the sky mapping being undertaken at the University of Tasmania using the Llanherne low frequency array. (Ellis 1972).

The observations are facilitated by the use of an on-line PDP-8 computer and the beam steering system described by Whitham (1975). In summary, a scanning system is used in which the computer is programmed to steer the telescope beam to a number of declinations with a time interval between settings such that a scan takes 5 minutes. Usually a scan of 12 declinations is chosen. Calibration levels obtained each hour and recorded on magnetic tape permit gain changes to be accounted for when the data is analysed from the tape.

For many pulsars the integrated or mean pulse profile is highly polarized. Generally linear polarization dominates over circular and there is a continuous variation of position angle through the profile (e.g. Manchester 1971). In most models for the emission process the angle of polarization is related to the (projected) direction of magnetic fields in the source region. Several of the observed properties of pulsars, for example, the mode-changing phenomenon (Backer 1970) and the different spectral index of different components of the intergrated profile (Manchester 1971), suggest that different parts of the integrated profile are emitted in different (though closely related) parts of the source. The different observed position angles across the integrated profile would then result from different projected magnetic field directions in these different parts of the source. For many pulsars the observed position angle variations are closely represented by a path through a radial set of projected field directions such as would be obtained in the vicinity of a magnetic pole (cf. Radhakrishnan and Cooke 1969).

Since early 1974 the radioheliograph operated by the Division of Radiophysics at Culgoora, N.S.W. has been used in a 160 MHz study of ~2000 catalogued sources in the declination range -46° to +35°. In addition to measurements of flux densities and accurate positions at 160 MHz, brightness distributions are obtained for the sources that can be resolved by the 1’.9 × 1’.9 arc beams. A comparison of the brightness distributions at 160 MHz with those obtained from high-frequency measurements with similar angular resolution can yield valuable information about the energy distribution of the relativistic electrons, which are believed to be responsible for the radio emission from most nonthermal sources. Among the first objects to be examined were the strong southern radio galaxies Centaurus-A and Pictor-A.

Since 1971, the Llanherne low frequency radio telescope (Ellis 1972) has been used to conduct surveys of the sky at several decametric wavelengths. Prior to 1974, only pen recordings on paper chart for one declination at each of the wavelengths were obtained each night and all the work to produce the final sky maps was to have been done by hand. However in 1974, a general purpose digital minicomputer (a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 8/E) has considerably increased the research capabilities of the telescope. In the continuum sky surveys profiles at several different declinations are now obtained each night. In addition all the information gathered in an observing session is written onto magnetic tape which is later analysed on the University of Tasmania’s computer (an Elliot-503) thus providing the possibility of removing much of the tedious manual work in preparing the final sky maps. This paper describes the system developed by the author which is used by Cane (1975) to obtain the profiles from which the sky maps are being compiled.

During the past twelve years five series of observations have been made of the polarization of Jupiter’s radio emission at a wavelength of 11 cm. This data shows characteristics which have been stable over a period of years as well as some unexplained variations. The observations were made during one complete orbital period of Jupiter and hence were obtained over the full range of values of DE, the angle between Jupiter’s rotational axis and the plane of the sky. These are summarized in Table 1. The 1967 observations have been reported previously (Komesaroff and McCulloch 1967) and the 1963 data is from Roberts and Komesaroff (1965).

Prompted by recent moves to ask the International Astronomical Union to redefine the System III rotation period, we have used all available dekametric observations from 1951 to 1975 and new analysis methods in an attempt to improve our estimate of the Jovian dekametric rotation period.

Commissioning of the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) is now well along and regular scheduled observing will begin at the end of June. This paper is an account of the main features of the telescope as they will appear to observers, and is intended in particular as a guide to people who are formulating programmes. First however some remarks on the telescope design.

The study of short time scale phenomena of astronomical interest is often handicapped by the presence of wide band noise. In particular, in the study of the optical variability of stars, such noise arises from atmospheric scintillation, extinction variations, sky radiance variations and photon statistics. For example if in order to resolve rapid stellar variability we reduce the length (T) of the time intervals over which a photometric record is integrated and sampled, we find that the fractional noise fluctuations increase, eventually obscuring any intrinsic variability.

A program has been designed for Hewlett-Packard 9100 A Calculator connected by a 9102A Buffer to a 9101 A Extended Memory, a 9120 A Printer and 9125 Plotter. The program evaluates and plots one-night photoelectric measurements in 3 colours of a short period eclipsing variable and detects the exact time of the minimum. The program may take a maximum of 24 observations either of a comparison star or of the variable in each colour but it could easily be modified for a maximum of 36 observations in two colours or seventy two observations in one colour. The usual alternating succession of the type CVCVC… is supposed but up to three successive measurements both of the comparison star and of the variable is possible, e.g. CVCCCVCVCVVVCVC…

The eighth magnitude star HD 101065 has an extremely peculiar spectrum dominated by very numerous lines of the rare earths (with only the one possible exception of ytterbium, whose lines are difficult to identify). Besides the rare earths only strontium, yttrium and zirconium could be found in substantial quantities, while calcium though present is highly underabundant. The most surprising feature of the star is the absence of iron peak elements in its spectrum.

Recent spectroscopic investigations of OB stars by Walborn (1970,1971a) have revealed the existence of OB stars with anomalous nitrogen and carbon spectra. In particular, two groups of stars were identified — those with strong nitrogen features and accompanying weak carbon-oxygen blends (called ON stars), and those with weak nitrogen features and strong carbon features (called OC stars). These groups bear a striking resemblance to the WN, WC dichotomy exhibited by the Wolf Rayet stars and is suggestive that a common process may be responsible for both phenomena.

In calculating models of stellar interiors convection is almost always treated by assuming that it is present if and only if the Schwarzschild criterion is satisfied. It seems possible that this oversimplifies the actual situation. In particular convective motions may overshoot beyond the formal boundary of the convective core, as given by the Schwarzschild criterion. The principal result of such overshooting would be the mixing of additional material into the core. This sort of additional mixing has been considered by Maeder (1974) and by Prather and Demarque (1974) in relation to the evolution of stars away from the main sequence in old open clusters.

Current evolutionary theory indicates that evolving stars in globular clusters arrive on the horizontal branch with ~30% less mass than they had on the main sequence. If, as seems likely, this mass loss results from the outflow of unprocessed material at the stellar surface during the giant stage, and if the ejected mass were retained within the cluster between successive sweeps through the galactic plane (~108 yr), sufficient hydrogen (100-2000 M⊙ should accumulate for detection. Radio searches, however, have failed to find evidence for either neutral or ionized gas. The hydrogen mass upper limits obtained by various workers are: Hills and Klein (1973) ionized H, 3.8 cm, <20-200 M⊙; Knapp, Rose and Kerr (1973) neutral H, 21 cm, <1-20 M⊙; Conklin and Kimble (1974) neutral H, 21 cm, <0.7-1.4 M⊙.

We have extended the search into the optical region and have also calculated time-independent gas flow models to try to resolve this anomaly.