The microquasar GX 339-4 experienced an outburst in 2010. We focus on observations that are quasi-simultaneous with those made by INTEGRAL and RXTE in March–April 2010 with radio, NIR, optical and UV data. X-ray transients are extreme systems, often harboring a black hole, known to emit throughout the whole electromagnetic spectrum in outburst. We studied the source evolution and correlated changes in all wavelengths. The bolometric flux increased from 0.8 to 2.9 × 10−8 erg cm−2 s−1 while the relative contribution of the hot medium decreased. The radio, NIR and optical emission from jets was detected and observed to fade as the source softened; reprocessing in the disc was strong at the end.

Maser polarization observations can reveal unique information on the magnetic field strength and structure for a large number of very different astronomical objects. As the different masers for which polarization is measured, such as silicon-monoxide, water, hydroxil and methanol, probe different physical conditions, the masers can even be used to determine for example the relation between magnetic field and density. In particular, maser polarization observations have improved our understanding of the magnetic field strength in, among others, the envelopes around evolved stars, Planetary Nebulae (PNe), massive star forming regions, supernova remnants and megamaser galaxies. This review presents an overview of maser polarization observations and magnetic field determinations of the last several years and discusses some of the theoretical considerations needed for a proper maser polarization analysis.

Quiescent solar prominences are cool and dense plasma clouds located inside the hot and less dense solar corona. They are highly dynamic structures displaying flows, instabilities, oscillatory motions, etc. The oscillations have been mostly interpreted in terms of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves, which has allowed to perform prominence seismology as a tool to determine prominence physical parameters difficult to measure. Here, several prominence seismology applications to large and small amplitude oscillations are reviewed.

Spectral differential imaging (SDI) is part of the observing strategy of current and on-going high-contrast imaging instruments on ground-based telescopes. Although it improves the star light rejection, SDI attenuates the signature of off-axis companions to the star, just like angular differential imaging (ADI). However, the attenuation due to SDI has the peculiarity of being dependent on the spectral properties of the companions. To date, no study has investigated these effects. Our team is addressing this problem based on data from a direct imaging survey of 16 stars combining the phase-mask coronagraph, the SDI and the ADI modes of VLT/NaCo. The objective of the survey is to search for cool (Teff<1000-1300 K) giant planets at separations of 5-10 AU orbiting young, nearby stars (<200 Myr, <25 pc). The data analysis did not yield any detections. As for the estimation of the sensivity limits of SDI-processed images, we show that it requires a different analysis than that used in ADI-based surveys. Based on a method using the flux predictions of evolutionary models and avoiding the estimation of contrast, we determine directly the mass sensivity limits of the survey for the ADI processing alone and with the combination of SDI and ADI. We show that SDI does not systematically improve the sensitivity due to the spectral properties and self-subtraction of point sources.

The sunspot number data during the past 400 years indicates that both the profile and the amplitude of the solar cycle have large variations. Some precursors of the solar cycle were identified aiming to predict the solar cycle. The polar field and the geomagnetic index are two precursors which are received the most attention. The geomagnetic variations during the solar minima are potentially caused by the solar polar field by the connection of the solar open flux. The robust prediction skill of the polar field indicates that the memory of the dynamo process is less than 11 yrs based on the frame of the Babcock-Leighton flux transport dynamo. One possible reason to get the short magnetic memory is the high magnetic diffusivity in the convective zone. Our recent studies show that the radial downward pumping is another possible reason. Based upon the mechanism, we well simulate the cycle irregularities during RGO time period. This opens the possibility to set up a standard dynamo based model to predict the solar cycle. In the end, the no correlation between the polar field and the preceding cycle strength due to two nonlinearities involved in the sunspot emergence will be stressed.

By using the 1-m reflecting telescope at Weihai Observatory of Shandong University, the transit observations of seven stars are carried out to accurately estimate the physical parameters of extrasolar planets. Besides, a new high-resolution spectrograph (WES) was installed on this telescope for radial velocity measurements on exoplanets, we will show some preliminary results.

The on-going PALFA survey is searching the Galactic plane (|b| < 5°, 32° < l < 77° and 168° < l < 214°) for radio pulsars at 1.4 GHz using ALFA, the 7-beam receiver installed at the Arecibo Observatory. By the end of August 2012, the PALFA survey has discovered 100 pulsars, including 17 millisecond pulsars (P < 30 ms). Many of these discoveries are among the pulsars with the largest DM/P ratios, proving that the PALFA survey is capable of probing the Galactic plane for millisecond pulsars to a much greater depth than any previous survey. This is due to the survey's high sensitivity, relatively high observing frequency, and its high time and frequency resolution. Recently the rate of discoveries has increased, due to a new more sensitive spectrometer, two updated complementary search pipelines, the development of online collaborative tools, and access to new computing resources. Looking forward, focus has shifted to the application of artificial intelligence systems to identify pulsar-like candidates, and the development of an improved full-resolution pipeline incorporating more sophisticated radio interference rejection. The new pipeline will be used in a complete second analysis of data already taken, and will be applied to future survey observations. An overview of recent developments, and highlights of exciting discoveries will be presented.

The method of statistical-parallax determination is used to adjust the photometric distance-scale zero points and test the selection of several samples of old and intermediate-age tracer objects in the Milky Way, including RR Lyrae- and Mira-type variables, blue and red horizontal-branch stars, and red giants. We obtain reasonable and stable absolute-magnitude (and, hence, photometric distance-scale) corrections for all samples except for the red horizontal-branch stars, which appear to be significantly contaminated by main-sequence turn-off and subgiant stars.

Magnetic fields are known to play an important role in several stages of the star formation process. Class I methanol (CH3OH) masers offer the possibility of measuring the large-scale magnetic field in star forming regions at high angular resolution, due to connections between the large-scale magnetic field in the pre-shock regions to the observed magnetic field along the outflows in the post-shock regions where these masers are formed. The detection of the Zeeman effect in the 36 GHz and 44 GHz Class I methanol maser lines by Sarma and Momjian has opened an exciting new window into the study of the star formation process, but for the results to be interpreted correctly, the Zeeman splitting factor (z) for both these lines needs to be urgently measured by experiment. Ratios between the pre-shock and post-shock magnetic fields and densities lead to the conclusion that the value of z cannot be too different from 1 Hz mG−1, unless the predicted densities at which 36 GHz and 44 GHz methanol masers are excited are drastically incorrect. Similarities between the detected fields in 36 GHz and 44 GHz Class I masers, and 6.7 GHz Class II masers, support the claim that these masers may be tracing the large-scale magnetic field or that the magnetic field remains the same during different evolutionary stages of the star formation process, provided such similarities are not just due to the assumption of a uniform nominal value for z, or result simply from selection effects due to orientation and/or the shock process. Given the exciting possibilities, a larger statistical sample of measurements in both the 36 GHz and 44 GHz lines is certainly needed.

Determining an evolutionary clock for high-mass star formation is an important step towards realizing a unified theory of star formation, as it will enable qualitative studies of the associated high-mass stars to be executed. Our recent studies have shown that masers have great potential to accurately trace the evolution of these regions. We have investigated the relative evolutionary phases associated with the presence of combinations of water, methanol and hydroxyl masers. Comparison between the characteristics of coincident sources has revealed strong evidence for an evolutionary sequence for the different maser species, a result that we now aim to corroborate through comparisons with chemical clocks.

Using our new, large samples of methanol masers at 6.7 GHz (MMB survey; Green et al. (2009)) and 12.2 GHz (Breen et al. 2012), 22 GHz water masers (Breen & Ellingsen 2012), OH masers together with complementary data, we find strong evidence that it is not only the presence or absence of the different maser species that indicates the evolutionary stage of the associated high-mass star formation region (see e.g. Breen et al. (2010)), but that the properties of those masers can give even finer evolutionary details. Most notably, the intensity and velocity range of detected maser emission increases as the star forming region evolves (Breen et al. 2011).

Subsequent work we have undertaken (Ellingsen et al. 2011) has shown that the presence of rare 37.7 GHz methanol masers may signal the end of the methanol maser phase. They show that 37.7 GHz methanol masers are associated only with the most luminous 6.7 and 12.2 GHz methanol masers, which combined with the rarity of these objects is consistent with them being a short lived phase towards the end of the 6.7 GHz methanol maser lifetime.

An independent confirmation of our maser evolutionary timeline can be gained through comparisons with chemical clocks. MALT90 is a legacy survey of 1000s of dense star forming cores at 90GHz, simultaneously observing 16 molecular lines with the Mopra radio telescope (see e.g. Foster et al. 2011). It provides the perfect dataset to test the maser evolutionary timeline due to the targeted lines and the fact that at least one-quarter of the MALT90 sources correspond to maser sites, providing a large enough sample for meaningful analysis. From our preliminary analysis, we find that star formation regions showing similar maser properties also show similar thermal line properties; as would be expected if our evolutionary scenario were accurate.

The most characteristic property of active galaxies, including quasars, are prominent broad emission lines. I will discuss an interesting possibility that dust is responsible for this phenomenon. The dust is known to be present in quasars in the form of a dusty/molecular torus which results in complexity of the appearance of active galaxies. However, this dust is located further from the black hole than the Broad Line Region. We propose that the dust is present also closer in and it is actually responsible for formation of the broad emission lines. The argument is based on determination of the temperature of the disk atmosphere underlying the Broad Line Region: it is close to 1000 K, independently from the black hole mass and accretion rate of the object. The mechanism is simple and universal but leads to a considerable complexity of the active nucleus surrounding. The understanding the formation of BLR opens a way to use it reliably - in combination with reverberation measurement of its size - as standard candles in cosmology.

We have exploited the new, deep, near-infrared Y,J,H,Ks UltraVISTA imaging of the COSMOS field, in tandem with deep optical and mid-infrared imaging, to conduct a new search for luminous galaxies at redshifts z ≃ 7. We have utilised this unique multi-wavelength dataset to select galaxy candidates at redshifts z > 6.5 by searching first for Y+J-detected objects which are undetected in the CFHT and HST optical data. This sample was then refined using a photometric redshift fitting code, enabling the rejection of lower-redshift galaxy contaminants and cool galactic M, L, T dwarf stars. The final result of this process is a small sample of (at most) ten credible galaxy candidates at z > 6.5 (from over 200,000 galaxies detected in the year-one UltraVISTA data). The new z ≃ 7 galaxies reported here are the first credible z ≃ 7 Lyman-break galaxies discovered in the COSMOS field and, as the most UV-luminous discovered to date at these redshifts, are prime targets for deep follow-up spectroscopy. We explore their physical properties, and briefly consider the implications of their inferred number density for the form of the galaxy luminosity function at z ≃ 7.

Several scenarios explaining how filaments are formed can be found in literature. In this paper, we analyzed the observations of an active region filament and critically evaluated the observed properties in the context of current filament formation models. This study is based on multi-height spectropolarimetric observations. The inferred vector magnetic field has been extrapolated starting either from the photosphere or from the chromosphere. The line-of-sight motions of the filament, which was located near disk center, have been analyzed inferring the Doppler velocities. We conclude that a part of the magnetic structure emerged from below the photosphere.

Over the past few years a major effort has been put into the exploration of potential sites for the deployment of submillimetre (submm) astronomical facilities. Amongst the most important sites are Dome C and Dome A on the Antarctic Plateau, and the Chajnantor area in Chile. In this context, we report on measurements of the sky opacity at 200 μm over a period of three years at the French-Italian station, Concordia, at Dome C, Antarctica. Based on satellite data, we present a comparison of the atmospheric transmission at 200, 350 μm between the best potential/known sites for submillimetre astronomy all around the world.

The precipitable water vapour (PWV) was extracted from satellite measurements of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) on the METOP-A satellite, between 2008 and 2010. We computed the atmospheric transmission at 200 μm and 350 μm using the forward atmospheric model MOLIERE (Microwave Observation LIne Estimation and REtrieval). This method allows us to compare known sites all around the world without the calibration biases of multiple in-situ instruments, and to explore the potential of new sites.

Increasing spatial resolution and contrast capabilities will make possible new direct detections of exoplanets, exozodis, and circumstellar disks. The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) has been engineered to sit at the combined focus of the Large Binocular Telescope's two 8.4m apertures. Both apertures are equipped with 672-actuator deformable secondary mirrors, the first of the next generation of “extreme” adaptive optics (AO) systems. We present an overview of the LBTI AO instrument suite and detail current on-sky performance.

We report on the parsec program, which observed 140 L and T dwarfs on a regular basis from 2007 to 2011, using the WIFI camera on the ESO/2.2 m telescope. Trigonometric parallaxes at 5 mas precision are derived for 49 objects, and mas yr−1-level proper motions are derived for approximately 200,000 objects in the same fields. We discuss image cleaning, object centroiding, and astrometric methods, in particular three different approaches for trigonometric parallax determination.

Several tools have been developed for the analysis of the results of direct imaging exoplanet surveys, mostly using a combination of Monte-Carlo simulations or a Bayesian approach. Here we present a novel approach to the statistical analysis of Direct Imaging surveys, called Quick-MESS, which allows for a much faster and flexible analysis.

Employing six-day (August 16-21, 2010) SDO/AIA observations, we systematically investigate the formation and disappearance of 58 barbs of a northern (~N60) polar crown filament. Three different ways of barb formation are discovered, including (1) the convergence of surrounding moving materials (55.2%), (2) the flows of materials from the filament (37.9%), and (3) the material injections from neighboring brightening regions (6.9%). We also find three different types of barb disappearance, involving: (i) the bi-lateral movements (44.8%), and (ii) the outflowing (27.6%) of barb material resulting in the barb disappearance, as well as (iii) the barb disappearance associated with neighboring brightenings (27.6%). We propose that barbs exchange materials with the filament, surrounding atmosphere, and nearby brightening regions, causing the barb formation and disappearance.

We discuss the variability of winds in two low-mass X-ray binaries, GX 13+1 and 4U 1630-47. XMM-Newton observations of these sources show that strong, photoionised winds with column densities well above 1022 cm−2 can be present in both neutron star and black hole LMXBs. Such winds can fade significantly due to changes in the flux or spectral hardness of the continuum. In particular, a decrease of column density and/or an increase of ionisation are measured when the flux increases or the spectrum hardens. We show how variability studies can help us to understand what triggers changes in the wind and discuss the limitations of current instruments for such studies.

Linear and nonlinear approaches are used to investigate the phase asynchrony between the polar faculae (PF) and sunspot numbers (SNs). It is found that, (1) PF show leads of 52 months relative to SNs on the average of the considered time interval; (2) the cross-wavelet transform analysis shows that they are asynchronous in both the low- and high-frequency components. These indicate that their phase relationship is not only time-dependent but also frequency-dependent.