The Sydney University one mile cross-type radio telescope at the Molonglo Radio Observatory has been used to study the 30 Doradus nebula with high resolution (~3´ arc) at 408 MHz. This preliminary report compares these observations with Balmer line isophotes published by Faulkner. A description of the calibration procedures used in the present observations, an analysis of the various radio features in the 30 Doradus region, and a comparison with previous observations at other frequencies, will be described in a later paper.

Variable absorption features were observed in the visible and ultraviolet spectrum of β Pictoris soon after this star gained attention in the early 1980s due to its large IRAS infrared excess and the discovery, from optical imaging, of an edge-on dust disk. The absorption has been attributed to the evaporation of infalling planetesimals or comet-like bodies (the falling evaporating bodies, or FEB, hypothesis). With a view to confronting this hypothesis with fuller observations, we monitored the Ca II H and K lines in β Pictoris simultaneously during 1998, obtaining sequences of spectra on 50 nights. Variable absorption was usually present. The different oscillator strengths of the H and K lines permit the determination of covering factors, but detailed modelling is required to test whether all features can be explained by the FEB hypothesis. The blend of Ca II H with Balmer H ε means that the H and K photospheric profiles are different, and that the variable absorption features do not evolve in parallel. The behaviour of the variable absorption on November 27 is evocative of a body passing in front of the stellar disk in a prograde equatorial orbit.

We present photometric observations of WD 1145+017 during six nights in early 2017. They exhibited asymmetric transits with durations of 10–50 mins and depths up to 50% in flux. We managed to track two deep features that drift in phase during 2.5-month season. This effect may be explained by period decreasing of the transiting formations due to their slow spiralling to the white dwarf. One of them seems to fragment in several smaller parts within a month. The structures causing the two deep transits have elongated shape whose sizes perpendicular and along the orbit are of the order of 1 R⊕ and 100 R⊕. They are parts of geometrically thin inhomogeneous disk (ring) around the white dwarf that is well within its Roche radius. This explains the observed dip activity of WD 1145+017 during the year 2017.

As the scale of cosmological surveys increases, so does the complexity in the analyses. This complexity can often make it difficult to derive the underlying principles, necessitating statistically rigorous testing to ensure the results of an analysis are consistent and reasonable. This is particularly important in multi-probe cosmological analyses like those used in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time, where accurate uncertainties are vital. In this paper, we present a statistically rigorous method to test the consistency of contours produced in these analyses and apply this method to the Pippin cosmological pipeline used for type Ia supernova cosmology with the DES. We make use of the Neyman construction, a frequentist methodology that leverages extensive simulations to calculate confidence intervals, to perform this consistency check. A true Neyman construction is too computationally expensive for supernova cosmology, so we develop a method for approximating a Neyman construction with far fewer simulations. We find that for a simulated dataset, the 68% contour reported by the Pippin pipeline and the 68% confidence region produced by our approximate Neyman construction differ by less than a percent near the input cosmology; however, they show more significant differences far from the input cosmology, with a maximal difference of 0.05 in $\Omega_{M}$ and 0.07 in w. This divergence is most impactful for analyses of cosmological tensions, but its impact is mitigated when combining supernovae with other cross-cutting cosmological probes, such as the cosmic microwave background.

Work on the development and use of optical fibres as light guides in astronomical spectroscopy has been underway at the AAO for over a year now. The fibres used are step-index polymer-clad silica with a core size of 200 microns giving an aperture size of 1.3 arcsec at the AAT f/8 focus. They are optimised for data transmission with losses below 5dB/km at a wavelength of 800 nm. The blue transmission is somewhat lower, typically 500dB/km at 300nm and 90dB/km at 400nm but over the short 2m length used these attenuations give transmissions of 79% and 96% respectively.

A new formula for the gravitational potential of flattened systems is proposed. It is a modification of the Miyamoto–Nagai potential and should be applied to very flattened systems, exponential discs as a typical example. The resulting rotation curve agrees sufficiently well with that obtained by using special functions and the total masses remain the same. The functions contained in the new term can improve the agreement for the rotation curve and also reduce the effect of negative density values which appear off the midplane.

A plausible formation scenario for the Galactic globular clusters 47 Tucanae (47 Tuc) and Omega Centauri $(\omega$ Cen) is that they are tidally stripped remnants of dwarf galaxies, in which case they are likely to have retained a fraction of their dark matter cores. In this study, we have used the ultra-wide band receiver on the Parkes telescope (Murriyang) to place upper limits on the annihilation rate of exotic Light Dark Matter particles $(\chi)$ via the $\chi\chi\rightarrow e^+e^-$ channel using measurements of the recombination rate of positronium (Ps). This is an extension of a technique previously used to search for Ps in the Galactic Centre. However, by stacking of spectral data at multiple line frequencies, we have been able to improve sensitivity. Our measurements have resulted in $3-\sigma$ flux density (recombination rate) upper limits of 1.7 mJy $\left(1.4\times 10^{43}\, \mathrm{s}^{-1}\right)$ and 0.8 mJy $\left(1.1 \times 10^{43} \mathrm{s}^{-1}\right)$ for 47 Tuc and $\omega$ Cen, respectively. Within the Parkes beam at the cluster distances, which varies from 10–23 pc depending on the frequency of the recombination line, and for an assumed annihilation cross-section $\langle\sigma v\rangle = 3\times 10^{-29} \mathrm{cm}^3\, \mathrm{s}^{-1}$ , we calculate upper limits to the dark matter mass and rms dark matter density of ${\lesssim} 1.2-1.3\times 10^5 f_n^{-0.5}$ $\left(m_\chi/\mathrm{MeV\, c}^{-2}\right)$ $\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$ and ${\lesssim} 48-54 f_n^{-0.5}$ $\left(m_\chi/\mathrm{MeV\, c}^{-2}\right)$ $\mathrm{M}_{\odot} \mathrm{pc}^{-3}$ for the clusters, where $f_n=R_n/R_p$ is the ratio of Ps recombination transitions to annihilations, estimated to be ${\sim}0.01$ . The radio limits for $\omega$ Cen suggest that, for a fiducial dark/luminous mass ratio of ${\sim}0.05$ , any contribution from Light Dark Matter is small unless $\langle\sigma v\rangle < 7.9\times 10^{-28}\ \left(m_\chi/\mathrm{MeV\, c}^{-2}\right)^2 \mathrm{cm}^3 \mathrm{s}^{-1}$ . Owing to the compactness and proximity of the clusters, archival 511-keV measurements suggest even tighter limits than permitted by CMB anisotropies, $\langle\sigma v\rangle < 8.6\times 10^{-31}\ (m_\chi/\mathrm{MeV\, c}^{-2})^2 \mathrm{cm}^3 \mathrm{s}^{-1}$ . Due to the very low synchrotron radiation background, our recombination rate limits substantially improve on previous radio limits for the Milky Way.

Fireballs are infrequently recorded by seismic sensors on the ground. If recorded, they are usually reported as one-off events. This study is the first seismic bulk analysis of the largest single fireball data set, observed by the Desert Fireball Network (DFN) in Australia in the period 2014–2019. The DFN typically observes fireballs from cm-m scale impactors. We identified 25 fireballs in seismic time series data recorded by the Australian National Seismograph Network (ANSN). This corresponds to 1.8% of surveyed fireballs, at the kinetic energy range of $10^6$ – $10^{10}$ J. The peaks observed in the seismic time series data were consistent with calculated arrival times of the direct airwave or ground-coupled Rayleigh wave caused by shock waves by the fireball in the atmosphere (either due to fragmentation or the passage of the Mach cone). Our work suggests that identification of fireball events in the seismic time series data depends on both physical properties of a fireball (such as fireball energy and entry angle in the atmosphere) and the sensitivity of a seismic instrument. This work suggests that fireballs are likely detectable within 200 km direct air distance between a fireball and seismic station, for sensors used in the ANSN. If each DFN observatory had been accompanied by a seismic sensor of similar sensitivity, 50% of surveyed fireballs could have been detected. These statistics justify the future consideration of expanding the DFN camera network into the seismic domain.

A pilot project has been proceeded to map $1\, \textrm{deg}^2$ on the Galactic plane for radio recombination lines (RRLs) using the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). The motivation is to verify the techniques and reliabilities for a large-scale Galactic plane RRL survey with FAST aiming to investigate the ionised environment in the Galaxy. The data shows that the bandpass of the FAST 19 beam L-band is severely affected by radio frequency interferences and standing wave ripples, which can hardly be corrected by traditional low order polynomials. In this paper, we investigate a series of penalised least square (PLS) based baseline correction methods for radio astronomical spectra that usually contain weak signals with high level of noise. Three promising penalised least squares based methods, AsLS, arPLS, and asPLS are evaluated. Adopting their advantages, a modified method named rrlPLS is developed to optimise the baseline fitting to our RRL spectra. To check their effectiveness, the four methods are tested by simulations and further verified using observed data sets. It turns out that the rrlPLS method, with optimised parameter $\lambda=2\times10^8$ , reveals the most sensitive and reliable emission features in the RRL map. By injecting artificial line profiles into the real data cube, a further evaluation of profile distortion is conducted for rrlPLS. Comparing to simulated signals, the processed lines with low signal-to-noise ratio are less affected, of which the uncertainties are mainly caused by the rms noise. The rrlPLS method will be applied for baseline correction in future data processing pipeline of FAST RRL survey. Configured with proper parameters, the rrlPLS technique verified in this work may also be used for other spectroscopy projects.

We present a millimetre-wave site characterisation for the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) based on nearly 9 yr of data from a seeing monitor operating at this facility. The seeing monitor, which measures the phase fluctuations in the signal from a geosynchronous satellite over a 230-m baseline caused by water vapour fluctuations along their sight lines, provides an almost gapless record since 2005, with high time resolution. We determine the root mean square (rms) of the path length variations as a function of time of day and season. Under the assumption of the ‘frozen screen’ hypothesis, we also determine the Kolmogorov exponent, α, for the turbulence and the phase screen speed. From these, we determine the millimetre-wave seeing at λ = 3.3 mm. Based on the magnitude of the rms path length variations, we estimate the expected fraction of the available observing time when interferometry could be successfully conducted using the ATCA, as a function of observing frequency and antenna baseline, for the time of day and the season. We also estimate the corresponding observing time fractions when using the water vapour radiometers installed on the ATCA in order to correct for the phase fluctuations occurring during the measurement of an astronomical source.

We have completed a 21-cm survey of a 600 square degree region of the Centaurus A group of galaxies at a redshift of ∼500 km s−1 as part of a larger survey of the entire southern sky. This group of galaxies was recently the subject of a separate and thorough optical survey (Côté et al. 1997), and thus presented an ideal comparison for us to test the survey performance. We have identified 10 new group members to add to the 21 already known in our survey area. Six of the new members are previously uncatalogued galaxies, while four were catalogued but assumed not to be group members. Including the seven known members outside of our survey area, this brings the total known number of Cen A members to 38. All of the new HI detections have optical counterparts, most being intrinsically very faint (MB > –13·0), late-type low surface brightness dwarfs. Most of the new members have HI masses only a few times our survey limit of 107M☉ at an assumed distance for the group of 3·5 Mpc, and are extremely gas-rich, with a median MHI/LB > 1. Our limiting HI sensitivity was actually slightly worse than the HI follow-up observations of the Côté et al. optical survey, yet we have already increased the known number of group members by 50% using an HIsurvey technique. While we have increased the known number of members by ∼50%, these new members contribute <4% to its light.

Using both a theoretical and an empirical approach, we have investigated the frequency of low redshift galaxy-galaxy lensing systems in which the signature of 3D weak lensing might be directly detectable. We find good agreement between these two approaches. Using data from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly redshift survey we estimate the frequency of detectable weak lensing at low redshift. We find that below a redshift of z ~ 0.6, the probability of a galaxy being weakly lensed by γ ⩾ 0.02 is ~ 0.01. We have also investigated the feasibility of measuring the scatter in the M* − Mh relation using shear statistics. We estimate that for a shear measurement error of Δγ = 0.02 (consistent with the sensitivity of the Direct Shear Mapping technique), with a sample of ~$50,000 spatially and spectrally resolved galaxies, the scatter in the M* − Mh relation could be measured. While there are currently no existing IFU surveys of this size, there are upcoming surveys that will provide this data (e.g The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX), surveys with Hector, and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA)).

We present a systematic search for radio counterparts of novae using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). Our search used the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey, which covered the entire sky south of declination $+41^{\circ}$ ($\sim$$34000$ square degrees) at a central frequency of 887.5 MHz, the Variables and Slow Transients Pilot Survey, which covered $\sim$$5000$ square degrees per epoch (887.5 MHz), and other ASKAP pilot surveys, which covered $\sim$200–2000 square degrees with 2–12 h integration times. We crossmatched radio sources found in these surveys over a two–year period, from 2019 April to 2021 August, with 440 previously identified optical novae, and found radio counterparts for four novae: V5668 Sgr, V1369 Cen, YZ Ret, and RR Tel. Follow-up observations with the Australian Telescope Compact Array confirm the ejecta thinning across all observed bands with spectral analysis indicative of synchrotron emission in V1369 Cen and YZ Ret. Our light-curve fit with the Hubble Flow model yields a value of $1.65\pm 0.17 \times 10^{-4} \rm \:M_\odot$ for the mass ejected in V1369 Cen. We also derive a peak surface brightness temperature of $250\pm80$ K for YZ Ret. Using Hubble Flow model simulated radio lightcurves for novae, we demonstrate that with a 5$\sigma$ sensitivity limit of 1.5 mJy in 15-min survey observations, we can detect radio emission up to a distance of 4 kpc if ejecta mass is in the range $10^{-3}\rm \:M_\odot$, and upto 1 kpc if ejecta mass is in the range $10^{-5}$–$10^{-3}\rm \:M_\odot$. Our study highlights ASKAP’s ability to contribute to future radio observations for novae within a distance of 1 kpc hosted on white dwarfs with masses $0.4$–$1.25\:\rm M_\odot$, and within a distance of 4 kpc hosted on white dwarfs with masses $0.4$–$1.0\:\rm M_\odot$.

In this brief communication, a new method is outlined for modelling magnification patterns on an observer’s plane using a first-order approximation to the null geodesic path equations for a point mass lens. For each ray emitted from a source, an explicit calculation is made for the change in position on the observer’s plane due to each lens mass. By counting the number of points in each small area of the observer’s plane, the magnification at that point can be determined. This allows for a very simple and transparent algorithm. A short Matlab code sample for creating simple magnification maps due to multiple point lenses is included in an appendix.

I discuss the development and resolution of the solar neutrino problem, as well as opportunities now open to us to extend our knowledge of main-sequence stellar evolution and neutrino astrophysics.

In this study, new observations and some results of statistical analyses are presented. The largest flare data set of DO Cep in the literature has been obtained with 89 flares detected in 67.61 hours of U-band flare patrol. First of all, the observations demonstrated that the star is one of the most active flare stars in respect to the computed flare frequency. Secondly, using the independent samples t-test, the detected flares were classified into two subtypes, and then they were modelled. Analysing the models demonstrated that the fast and slow flares occurring on the star can be separated with a critical value of the ratio of their decay time to rise time. The critical value was computed as 3.40. According to this value, the fast flare rate is 20.22%, while the slow flare rate is 79.78%. Besides, there is a 39.282 times difference between the energies of these two types of flares. However, the flare equivalent durations versus the flare rise times increase in similar ways for both groups. In addition, all the flares were modelled with the one-phase exponential association function. Analysing this model, the plateau value was found to be 2.810. Moreover, the half-life value was computed as 433.1 s from the model. The maximum flare rise time was found to be 1164 s, while the maximum flare total duration was found to be 3472 s. The results of the flare timescales indicate that the geometry of the flaring loop on the surface of the star might be similar to those seen on analogues of DO Cep. Consequently, considering both the half-life value and flare timescales, the flares detected on the surface of DO Cep get maximum energy in longer times, while the geometries of the flaring loops or areas get smaller.

Very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) polarisation measurements provide information about the parsec-scale magnetic field structures in compact active galactic nuclei (AGN), as well as the densities of relativistic and thermal electrons in the radio emitting regions. This paper reviews the role of polarisation VLBI in studies of AGN variability on both relatively long and short (intraday) timescales.

The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is being constructed in China. With an illuminated aperture of 300-m diameter, it will be the most sensitive single-dish radio telescope in the world. We calculate the beam patterns, gains, and efficiencies of the FAST at 200 MHz, 1.4 GHz, and 3 GHz. A program is developed to calculate the structural parameters and construct the FAST models. The three-dimensional beam patterns are calculated by utilising the shooting and bouncing ray method. We show that, with a coaxial horn feed, the FAST has a beam pattern of high gain and reasonably low first sidelobe over the frequency range of 200 MHz to 3 GHz. Compared with an ideal 300-m parabolic reflector, the un-illuminated spherical part of the FAST would make the power level near both sides of the main beam rise by at least 20 dB and the efficiency tends to decrease at high frequencies. At a zenith angle of 0°, its efficiencies at 200 MHz, 1.4 GHz, and 3 GHz are 71.72%, 66.94%, and 57.55%, respectively. We conclude that the FAST is an excellent telescope at low frequencies. At high frequencies, the triangular spherical panels and the gaps between panels are important factors that affect the performance of the FAST.

Observations of the Pluto-Charon system using the Hubble Space Telescope are soon to provide another test of the modern Laplacian theory of solar system origin. According to this theory, Pluto, Charon and Neptune’s moon Triton are condensed remnants of the gas ring which was shed by the proto-solar cloud at Neptune’s orbit, and from which Neptune formed. Each body should have the same bulk chemical composition provided that the influence of secondary events such as physical collision can be neglected. Here we report a model for the time-dependent, surface-catalysed production of CH4, solid carbon C(s) and CO2 within the outer layers of the proto-solar cloud. This model is used to determine the condensate mix which best fits the Voyager 2 spacecraft measurements of Triton’s mean density. We suggest that Triton is a chemically homogeneous structure consisting, by mass, of 44.2% anhydrous rock, 2.1% graphite, 33.0% water ice and 20.7% dry ice (i.e., solid CO2 ice, of which a fraction nearly 2/3 is present as the clathrate hydrate CO2·5.75 H2O). On the basis of this composition, the individual mean densities of Pluto and Charon are predicted to be 2.02 ± 0.02 g/cm3 and 1.94 ± 0.02 g/cm3, respectively, assuming a mean surface temperature of 35 K. The mean density of the combined system is predicted to be 2.01 ± 0.02 g/cm3.