Studies of solar absorption line profiles obtained at high spatial and spectral resolution have usually been content to extract one parameter (the frequency shift in the core of the line) from each profile to describe the velocity field. However, attempts have been made to obtain the variation of velocity with depth in the solar atmosphere either by simultaneous observation of the frequency shift in the cores of several lines with different excitation potentials or by measuring the bisector-shift in a single line profile as described by Kulander and Jefferies (1966). In the first method it is necessary to assign a depth of formation to the core of each line used while in the second method a depth of formation has to be assigned to each point in the line profile. Parnell and Beckers (1969) have discussed the problems involved in assigning a depth on formation and in particular they have shown that when a velocity field is present the concept of depth of formation is dependent of the velocity field. In this contribution we describe a method of determining the velocity field from a single line profile which does not suffer from the problems associated with methods based on the concept of depth of formation.

The K giants are the brightest stars in clusters of both intermediate (∽ 108 years) and old (∽ 109-10 years) age. They have strong metal lines and strong bands of CN and CH in the optical spectrum, and are the logical objects in which to measure the metal abundance of such stellar systems and trace the evolution of heavy elements in the universe.

Stewart (1978) has reported four moving type IV bursts observed with the Culgoora radio heliograph at 43, 80 and 160 MHz. After an early phase, the brightness temperatures of the observed bursts decreased with increasing frequency and with time. The highest brightness temperature observed at 43 MHz was 1010K, and it seems that the brightness temperature would have been still higher at even lower frequencies. Existing theoretical ideas on moving type IV bursts are based on data (at 80 MHz primarily) which included no brightness temperatures in excess of 109K. the accepted interpretation involved gyro-synchrotron radiation from mildly relativistic electrons (energies ≈ 100 keV); reabsorption by the electrons themselves restricts the brightness temperature to less than about 100 keV ≈ 109K (Wild and Smerd 1972, Dulk 1973). Stewart’s (1978) new data at 43 MHz require that this accepted interpretation be modified; he has suggested that higher energy electrons are involved. An alternative suggestion is explored here, namely that the absorption might be negative. In other words, the high brightness temperatures observed could be due to a gyro-synchrotron maser involving electrons with energies of about 100 keV.

In the wide complex profiles of OH, H2CO and CO spectra observed in directions towards the galactic centre, only the features at radial velocities near + 40 km s-1 are generally believed to originate in the molecular clouds nearest the galactic nucleus. The features at other velocities are associated with clouds or spiral features that can be traced over larger ranges of galactic longitude, implying locations which are more distant from the nucleus. In particular, the features near zero velocity have been traditionally associated with molecular clouds within 1-2 kpc of the Sun. However, H2CO observations with high velocity resolution provide evidence that one cloud with velocity near zero is probably near the galactic nucleus.

In a technical sense radio astronomers do not use the radio spectrum; they are listeners only, and when the science began they had to listen in the quiet spaces between transmitting services. Radio astronomy was first recognized as a service by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in 1959, and the first frequency allocations were then made for it as a ‘passive’ service. In 1963 and 1971 further allocations and frequency protection were obtained at specialized World Administrative Radio Conferences (WARC). The allocations were required for two purposes: (i) to protect the frequencies of the most important spectral lines of atoms and molecules, and (ii) to provide a series of bands for continuum observations. The general protection so far provided has been vital to the growth of the science, and its continuation is of the highest priority to the future life and development of radio astronomy.

The reliable detection and identification of weak, small-diameter radio sources require an instrument with both high sensitivity and high positional accuracy.

The coefficient of atmospheric extinction may change during the night and in fact it often does. This has an adverse effect on the determination of atmospheric extinction by simple Bouguer plot of magnitude against air mass. This effect was studied by Rufener (1964), who introduced for the purpose of accurate photoelectric photometry in the Geneva photometric system the method of two ‘extinction stars’. His method consists of the measurement of two stars of the same colour — one starting at high air mass 2 - 3, the M-star (for French montante = rising) and the second starting simultaneously in the meridian at low air mass, the D—star (for descending).

The deflection of the light rays of a distant star by the gravitational field of a nearby star was first derived independently by Link (1936) and Einstein (1936). It was shown by Link (1936,1937) that the light of a distant star is not only deflected forming two separate images of the distant star, but also the brightness of the distant star (in bothimages) is affected.

Radio position measurements with an error of <2” arc rms allow reliable optical identifications of compact radio sources to be made solely on the basis of radio-optical position coincidence. In this way neutral or red stellar objects, faint compact galaxies and faint QSOs can be reliably identified. Such identifications are of particular interest because they are rich in BL Lac objects, high-redshift QSOs, QSOs with unusual optical emission or absorption spectra and galaxies with active nuclei (see Jauncey et al. 1978).

The existence of a group of magnetic white dwarfs with mean surface fields of between ~5 × 106 G and ~2 × 1O7 G is now firmly established through the discovery of Zeeman structure in hydrogen and helium lines (Angel et al. 1974, Liebert et al. 1975, Wickramasinghe et al. 1977, Martin & Wickramasinghe 1978, Liebert et al. 1977). There is considerable evidence from polarimetric studies for even higher fields in some white dwarfs (Angel 1977). Most of these stars are cool and show nearly continuous spectra or weak unidentified absorption features. The possibility of cyclotron absorption in white dwarfs was first discussed in connection with the infrared polarisation spectrum of one of these stars, Grw + 70°8247 (Kemp 1970). More recently the polarised white dwarf GD229 was found to have a rich optical spectrum with a strong feature at λ4185, for which cyclotron absorption has been mentioned as a possible origin (Angel 1977, Greenstein & Boksenberg 1977), though without supporting computations. In this letter we use models to investigate this possibility further.

The initial flight of the University of Tasmania balloon-borne X-ray telescope was made from Parkes on Dec. 2, 1976. During the flight, enhanced X-ray emission was observed from the directions of 3U0900-40 (Vela XR-1), GX301-2 and the Galactic Centre. In this paper we report on the performance of the payload during the 11 hour flight and describe the preliminary results thus far obtained.

Recently (Gleeson (1972), Quenby (1973), Gleeson and Webb (1974, 1978)) it has been shown that the mean rate of change of momentum of cosmic rays reckoned for a volume fixed in the solar system is

where G = (1/Up)(∂Up/∂r)si the cosmic-ray density gradient with Up, the differential number density with respect to momentum p at position r. (cf also the integral form of (1) by Jokipii and Parker 1967).

A new survey of the southern sky for pulsars is being carried out jointly by the University of Sydney and the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics. J. M. Durdin, M. I. Large and A. G. Little from Sydney University have been working with R. N. Manchester, J. H. Taylor and myself from Radiophysics. This paper provides a brief description of the experiment and an account of progress to date.

The double-mode or beat Cepheids continue to pose a number of interesting questions in our search for an understanding of the pulsation properties of stars near the short period end of the instability strip. One such is how simultaneous pulsations in the fundamental and first overtone radial modes can occur for an appreciable fraction of Cepheids in the period range 1d < Pо < 5d.

The arms in spiral galaxies cannot be material arms for then they would wind up on a time scale of one galactic rotation, or a few times 108 years. The large number of spirals suggests that the spiral pattern must persist for about 1010 years (or be continually rejuvenated). The density wave theory treats the spiral pattern as a wave phenomenon, thus overcoming this problem. Much work has been done studying small amplitude oscillations in flat stellar discs. Self-consistent spiral modes have been found, but they are not stable and grow at a fast rate. Numerical simulations of thin stellar discs, such as those of Hohl (1971), which can handle finite amplitude waves, have been more successful. Spiral waves form initially but evolve into a steady state rotating bar. It seems therefore, that a long-lived spiral cannot be formed in stars alone.

The discovery of pulsars in 1967 marked the watershed of interest in short-time-scale phenomena in radio astronomy. Ionospheric scintillation on time scales of seconds, interplanetary scintillations at tenths of seconds and solar bursts of similar duration had already been studied. But with pulsars individual pulses contained subpulses of width about 10 ms, and later observations of microstructure were to show that structure with scales of 10—100 μs were present. In other areas searches for the 10—100 ms radio pulses expected to accompany the gravitational wave events resulting from stellar collapses were made, and more recently searches have been made for the radio pulse accompanying the explosion of small black holes (Rees 1977). Work in this area is summarized by O’Sullivan et al. (1978) and Phinney and Taylor (1979).

One of the major problems in the theory of type III solar radio bursts concerns the development of the two-stream instability. On the one hand, Sturrock (1964) argued that one expects the instability to develop rapidly, and if it does it should prevent the stream from propagating through the corona, contrary to observation. On the other hand, one appears to require that the instability develop partially, in the sense that there is some significant amplified emission of Langmuir waves, in order to account for the observed emission.

SV Cen is an eclipsing variable of the Beta Lyrae type and is especially known by its rapid changes of period. The system was studied photometrically and spectroscopically by Irwin and Landolt (1972). According to the previous study by O’Connell (1951) the system exhibits a 34-year periodicity.

Interesting observations have been made possible by the success of the acousto-optical radio spectrograph, a unique form of multi-channel filter type of spectral receiver whose channel outputs ian be sampled at high rates by a computer. Three spectrographs are available at the Division of Radiophysics. Two divide a 100 MHz spectral range into 512 channels and are normally dedicated to spectral-line work (Cole and Milne 1977) and solar work (Cole et al. 1978). The Parkes observations reported here use a more compact spectrograph, which gives increased performance — up to 270 MHz can be studied, divided into 256 frequency channels. The light deflector of this spectrograph was kindly supplied by Itek Corporation.