We studied the radio spectrum of PSR B1259-63 in an unique binary with Be star LS 2883 and showed that the shape of the spectrum depends on the orbital phase. We proposed a qualitative model which explains this evolution. We considered two mechanisms that might influence the observed radio emission: free-free absorption and cyclotron resonance. Recently published results have revealed a new aspect in pulsar radio spectra. There were found objects with turnover at high frequencies in spectra, called gigahertz-peaked spectra (GPS) pulsars. Most of them adjoin such interesting environments as HII regions or compact pulsar wind nebulae (PWN). Thus, it is suggested that the turnover phenomenon is associated with the environment than being related intrinsically to the radio emission mechanism. Having noticed the apparent resemblance between the B1259-63 spectrum and the GPS, we suggest that the same mechanisms should be responsible for both cases. Therefore, the case of B1259-63 can be treated as a key factor to explain the GPS phenomenon observed for the solitary pulsars with interesting environments and also another types of spectra (e.g. with break).

Meridional flow results from slight deviations from the thermal wind balance. The deviations are relatively large in the boundary layers near the top and bottom of the convection zone. Accordingly, the meridional flow attains its largest velocities at the boundaries and decreases inside the convection zone. The thickness of the boundary layers, where meridional flow is concentrated, decreases with rotation rate, so that an advection-dominated regime of dynamos is not probable in rapidly rotating stars. Angular momentum transport by convection and by the meridional flow produce differential rotation. The convective fluxes of angular momentum point radially inward in the case of slow rotation but change their direction to equatorward and parallel to the rotation axis as the rotation rate increases. The differential rotation of main-sequence dwarfs is predicted to vary mildly with rotation rate but increase strongly with stellar surface temperature. The significance of differential rotation for dynamos has the opposite tendency to increase with spectral type.

We consider the evolution of the very young neutron stars (NS) with moderate and low magnetic field values around 1E8 G to know how large is the share of the these objects among the those attributed as the millisecond pulsars (MSP). To exclude the contamination of accreted NS and young NS with moderate magnetic fields we study the observational evidences of the accretion on NS in the binary systems and different methods of age determinations. It was concluded that only central compact objects are appropriate candidates for NSs with small initial magnetic fields.

Here, the state of our knowledge regarding the interior dynamics and evolution of habitable terrestrial planets including Earth and super-Earths is reviewed, and illustrated using state-of-the-art numerical models. Convection of the rocky mantle is the key process that drives the evolution of the interior: it causes plate tectonics, controls heat loss from the metallic core (which generates the magnetic field) and drives long-term volatile cycling between the atmosphere/ocean and interior. Geoscientists have been studying the dynamics and evolution of Earth's interior since the discovery of plate tectonics in the late 1960s and on many topics our understanding is very good, yet many first-order questions remain. It is commonly thought that plate tectonics is necessary for planetary habitability because of its role in long-term volatile cycles that regulate the surface environment. Plate tectonics is the surface manifestation of convection in the 2900-km deep rocky mantle, yet exactly how plate tectonics arises is still quite uncertain; other terrestrial planets like Venus and Mars instead have a stagnant lithosphere- essentially a single plate covering the entire planet. Nevertheless, simple scalings as well as more complex models indicate that plate tectonics should be easier on larger planets (super-Earths), other things being equal. The dynamics of terrestrial planets, both their surface tectonics and deep mantle dynamics, change over billions of years as a planet cools. Partial melting is a key process influencing solid planet evolution. Due to the very high pressure inside super-Earths' mantles the viscosity would normally be expected to be very high, as is also indicated by our density function theory (DFT) calculations. Feedback between internal heating, temperature and viscosity leads to a superadiabatic temperature profile and self-regulation of the mantle viscosity such that sluggish convection still occurs.

We present the results of detailed study of a set of activities developed on one of three enclosed sectors of solar region during the period of February 07–13, 2012. We found the sequence of certain topological perturbations of whole coronal holes (CHs) and their surroundings associated to the eruption of nearby prominence and subsequent Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). Especially, we observe the emergence of small bright points (BPs) and the formation of dimming regions (DRs) close to the filament's channel associated with a pre–evolution of filament/prominence eruption, whereas BPs disappearance and the shrinkage of CH we found associated with the post-eruption evolution of prominence and of CME.

Luminous extragalactic masers are traditionally referred to as the ‘megamasers’. Those produced by water molecules are associated with accretion disks, radio jets, or outflows in the nuclear regions of active galactic nuclei (AGN). The majority of OH maser sources are instead driven by intense star formation in ultra-luminous infrared galaxies, although in a few cases the OH maser emission traces rotating (toroidal or disk) structures around the nuclear engines of AGN. Thus, detailed maser studies provide a fundamental contribution to our knowledge of the main nuclear components of AGN, constitute unique tools to measure geometric distances of host galaxies, and have a great impact on probing the, so far, paradigmatic Unified Model of AGN.

We report the detection of multi-armed spirals in the environment of HD 100546 using NICI at Gemini South in the Ks band. These data feature a better angular resolution and higher contrast than previous HST images, which allows to resolve the former known spiral into a multiple pattern. An analytic model with a gravitational perturber is used to fit the spiral pattern. We derived limit of detections which set constraints on the discovered forming planet.

Red clump (RC) giants are excellent standard candles in the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud. The near-infrared K-band intrinsic luminosity of RC giants exhibits only a small variance and a weak dependence on chemical composition and age. In addition, RCs are often easily recognizable in the color–magnitude diagrams of open clusters, which renders them extremely useful distance indicators for some intermediate-age or old open clusters. Here we determine the distance moduli of five Galactic open clusters covering a range of metallicities and ages, based on RC giants in the cluster regions using 2mass photometric data. We compare our result with those from main-sequence fitting and also briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of RC-based cluster distance determination.

We study the stellar populations of a large sample of nearly face-on disk Low Surface Brightness Galaxies (LSBGs), with B-band central surface brightness μ0(B) > 22 mag arcsec−2, selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4 (SDSS-DR4) main galaxy sample (similar to Zhong et al. 2008; Liang et al. 2010).

Pulsars are arguably the only astrophysical sources whose emission spans the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from decameter radio wavelengths to TeV energies. The LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) offers the unique possibility to study pulsars over a huge fractional bandwidth in the bottom 4 octaves of the radio window, from 15–240 MHz. Here we present a LOFAR study of pulsar single pulses, focussing specifically on the bright nearby pulsar B0809+74. We show that the spectral width of bright low-frequency pulses can be as narrow as 1 MHz and scales with increasing frequency as Δ f/fc ~ 0.15, at least in the case of the PSR B0809+74. This appears to be intrinsic to the pulsar, as opposed to being due to propagation effects. If so, this behavior is consistent with predictions by the strong plasma turbulence model of pulsar radio emission. We also present other observed properties of the single pulses and discuss their relation to other single-pulse phenomena like giant pulses.

The X-shooter Lens Survey (XLENS) aims to study the interplay of dark matter (DM) and stellar content in the inner regions of massive early-type galaxies (ETGs) by combining strong gravitational lensing, dynamical models, and spectroscopic stellar population analysis. XLENS targets a sample of ETGs from the SLACS survey (The Sloan Lens ACS Survey, e.g. Bolton et al. 2006) with velocity dispersions ≥250 kms−1 using the X-Shooter spectrograph on ESO's Very Large Telescope. Recent observations indicate that the internal dark-matter fraction of ETGs increases rapidly with galaxy mass, although some hints for a varying initial mass function (IMF) have also been suggested, where the low-mass end of the stellar IMF steepens with galaxy mass. XLENS first results unambiguously confirm that DM plays an important role already within one effective radius for very massive systems (Spiniello et al. 2011). Moreover, studying equivalent widths of certain red spectral features which are indicators of low-mass stars in massive ETGs (e.g. NaI and TiO2) as a function of age and metallicity (i.e. Mgb, Fe, Hβ), and as function of stellar velocity dispersion, has shown that the IMF slope is varying mildly with galaxy mass (Spiniello et al. 2012).

We present a study of the morphology, kinematics and star formation of a sample of 27 isolated spiral galaxies in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G), on the basis of Hα Fabry-Perot (FP) data from the GHαFaS instrument at the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma, complemented with images at 3.6 micron from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and with images in the R-band and in Hα taken with the ACAM instrument mounted on the WHT. With the FP data we can investigate the gas kinematics in terms of velocity maps and position-velocity diagrams, keys to constrain the secular evolution processes. We can also analyse the morphology and compute the star formation rate (SFR) with the ancillary data.

We consider rotating flows of an electrically conducting, viscous and resistive fluid in an external magnetic field with arbitrary combinations of axial and azimuthal components. Within the short-wavelength approximation, the local stability of the flow is studied with respect to perturbations of arbitrary azimuthal wavenumbers. In the limit of vanishing magnetic Prandtl number (Pm) we find that the maximum critical Rossby number (Ro) for the occurrence of the magnetorotational instability (MRI) is universally governed by the Liu limit ${\rm Ro}_{Liu}=2-2\sqrt{2}\approx -0.828$ which is below the value for Keplerian rotation RoKepler = −0.75.

The surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) method at near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths is a powerful tool for estimating distances to unresolved stellar systems with high precision. The IR channel of the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), installed on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in 2009, has a greater sensitivity and a wider field of view than the previous generation of HST IR instruments, making it much more efficient for measuring distances to early-type galaxies in the Local Volume. To take full advantage of its capabilities, we need to empirically calibrate the SBF distance method for WFC3's NIR passbands. We present the SBF measurements for the WFC3/IR F160W bandpass filter using observations of 16 early-type galaxies in the Fornax and Virgo Clusters. These have been combined with existing (g475–z850) color measurements from the Advanced Camera for Surveys Virgo and Fornax Cluster Surveys to derive a space-based H160-band SBF relation as a function of color. We have also compared the absolute SBF magnitudes to those predicted by evolutionary population synthesis models in order to study stellar population properties in the target galaxies.

In the last decades, the experimental study of dynamo action has made great progress. However, after the dynamo experiments in Karlsruhe and Riga, the von-Kármán-Sodium (VKS) dynamo is only the third facility that has been able to demonstrate fluid flow driven self-generation of magnetic fields in a laboratory experiment. Further progress in the experimental examination of dynamo action is expected from the planned precession driven dynamo experiment that will be designed in the framework of the liquid sodium facility DRESDYN (DREsden Sodium facility for DYNamo and thermohydraulic studies).

In this paper, we briefly present numerical models of the VKS dynamo that demonstrate the close relation between the axisymmetric field observed in that experiment and the soft iron material used for the flow driving impellers. We further show recent results of preparatory water experiments and design studies related to the precession dynamo and delineate the scientific prospects for the final set-up.

We focused on analysing the role played by protoplanetary disks in the evolution of angular momentum during star formation. If all the angular momentum contained within collapsing pre-stellar cores was conserved during their formation, proto-stars would reach rotation rates exceeding their break-up velocities before they reached the main sequence (Bodenheimer 1995). In order to avoid this occuring, methods by which proto-stars can lose angular momentum must exist. Angular momentum can be transferred from star to disk via stellar magnetic field lines through a process called magnetic braking (Camenzind 1990; Königl 1991). Alternatively, the stellar angular momentum can be lost from the star-disk system entirely via stellar- or disk-winds (e.g. Pelletier & Pudritz 1992; Matt & Pudritz 2005).

The proportion of lost stellar angular momentum retained within the protoplanetary disk is important to studies of planetary system formation. If the bulk motion within the disk remains Keplerian, any increase of angular momentum in the disk causes an outward migration of disk material and an expansion of the disk. Therefore, an increase in disk angular momentum may cause a reduction in the disk surface density, often used to indicate the disk's ability to form planets.

We made use of multi-wavelength data available in the literature to directly calculate the stellar and disk angular momenta for two nearby regions of star formation. Namely, these were the densely populated and highly irradiated Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) and the comparitively sparse Taurus-Auriga region. Due to the limited size of the ONC dataset, we produced an average surface density profile for the region. We modelled the stars as solid body rotators due to their fully convective nature (Krishnamurthi et al. 1997) and assumed the disks are flat and undergo Keplerian rotation about the same rotation axis as the star.

We observed the older disks within each of the two star forming regions to be preferentially larger and less massive, consistent with viscous accretion theories and disk dispersal. However, when drawing comparisons between the two regions, the ONC sample appeared to have less massive disks than the Taurus-Auriga sample, even though the population of Taurus-Auriga is older. This may suggest an influence of the birth cloud environment on protoplanetary disk evolution.

Finally, the older stars within the ONC were observed to harbour disks that contained more angular momentum than their younger counterparts whereas, in the Taurus-Auriga sample, the amount of angular momentum contained in the older and younger samples was consistent. We suggest that the missing disk angular momentum in the older Taurus-Auriga disks may be contained within yet-undetected planets.

Mass and radius of planets transiting their host stars are provided by radial velocity and photometric observations. Structural models of solid exoplanet interiors are then constructed by using equations of state for the radial density distribution, which are compliant with the thermodynamics of the high-pressure limit. However, to some extent those structural models suffer from inherent degeneracy or non-uniqueness problems owing to a principal lack of knowledge of the internal differentiation state and/or the possible presence of an optically thick atmosphere. We here discuss the role of corresponding measurement errors, which adversely affect determinations of a planet's mean density and bulk chemical composition. Precise measurements of planet radii will become increasingly important as key observational constraints for radial density models of individual solid low-mass exoplanets or super-Earths.

Masers in starburst galaxies are outstanding probes of a range of phenomena related to galaxy and black hole evolution, star formation, and magnetic fields. Here I briefly discuss five related topics: (1) Galactic analog water masers in nearby galaxies; (2) multiwavelength solutions to the OH megamaser puzzle in major galaxy mergers; (3) formaldehyde anti-inversion in starburst galaxies; (4) OH spoofing in HI surveys; and (5) new discovery space in radio line surveys. New insights into the physical conditions responsible for OH megamasers, including indications of a critical molecular gas density obtained from the formaldehyde “densitometer,” will be applicable to future surveys, particularly surveys for redshifted hydrogen where OH lines arising in major galaxy mergers can “contaminate” the disk population identified by the HI 21 cm line. Blind radio spectral line surveys also offer the opportunity for unexpected discoveries of new nonthermal radio lines.

We present high-sensitivity XMM/LOFAR observations that show for the first time that mode switching extends from radio to X-ray. In pulsar B0943+10, the known changes in radio profile and drift rate are confidently tied to simultaneous changes in X-ray emission.

In mode switching, seen in many pulsars, profile and subpulse-drift behavior change almost instantaneously. The mechanism for these drastic changes, or for the bi-stable emission behavior, is not understood; while even for the basic emission mechanism different families of theories (e.g. vacuum gap, or space-charge limited flow models) exist.

To discriminate between such models, we carried out a campaign of 42 hours of simultaneous LOFAR/XMM-Newton observations on PSR B0943+10. Through LOFAR's unparalleled low-frequency sensitivity, mode changes were pinpointed to 10-second accuracy. XMM X-ray photons were next separated by the two radio modes. We discovered large modal differences in the X-ray pulsations, flux, and spectral shapes: in the radio-bright mode, no X-ray pulsations are detected – but in the radio-quiet mode, B0943+10 is strongly pulsating in X-ray.

Using the eclipse observations, we construct the maps of quiescent prominence temperatures, electron densities, pressures and geometrical thicknesses. For this we use the RGB signal of prominence visible-light emission detected during the total solar eclipse on August 1, 2008 in Mongolia, and quasi-simultaneous Hα spectra taken at Ondřejov observatory. The method of disentangling the electron density and effective geometrical thickness was described by Jejčič & Heinzel (2009) and is used here for the first time to analyse the spatial variations of various prominence parameters.