The photometric and RV techniques, although extremely efficient to detect and characterize planets, are, however, indirect techniques (as well as astrometry). Phenomena such as stellar pulsation, inhomogeneous convection, spots or magnetic cycles can prevent us from finding planets or they might degrade the parameters estimation. We will consider the challenges related to the knowledge of stellar activity for the next decade: detect telluric planets in the habitable zone of their stars (from G to M dwarfs), understand the activity in the low-mass end of M dwarf (on which will focus future near-infrared high-resolution spectrograph like SPIRou or CARMENES), limitation to the process of summing several transit observations (in order to characterize the atmospheric components) due to the variability of stellar activity (from the ground or with Spitzer or JWST), as well as the methods proposed and used to overcome this issue.

Based on several tens of R0 measurements made during the past two decades, several studies have been performed to derive the best estimate of R0. Some used just simple averaging to derive a result, whereas others provided comprehensive analyses of possible errors in published results. In either case, detailed statistical analyses of data used were not performed. However, a computation of the best estimates of the Galactic rotation constants is not only an astronomical but also a metrological task. Here we perform an analysis of 53 R0 measurements (published in the past 20 years) to assess the consistency of the data. Our analysis shows that they are internally consistent. It is also shown that any trend in the R0 estimates from the last 20 years is statistically negligible, which renders the presence of a bandwagon effect doubtful. On the other hand, the formal errors in the published R0 estimates improve significantly with time.

The EVE instrument on SDO is making accurate measurements of the solar spectral irradiance in the EUV between 30 and 1069 Å, with 1 Å spectral resolution and 10 s sampling rate. These data define solar variability in the “Sun-as-a-star” mode and reveal many interesting kinds of variation. Its high sensitivity also makes it suitable for spectroscopic diagnostics of solar features such as flares. Here we present EVE's potential contribution to the diagnostics of large-scale, slowly evolving features such as prominences and active regions, and what we can learn from this.

We studied the color distribution of satellite galaxies in three groups of galaxies and found that nearly a half of galaxies show statistically significant radial color gradients, which are indicative of changing stellar ages and metallicities. We found that the disk-dominated satellite galaxies with positive color and age gradients (i.e., evolving in outside-in fashion) are residing, predominantly, in the inner, dense group regions, within the characteristic radius R200, while those galaxies, residing in the outer group in-fall region, show typically zero or negative gradients.

We conducted the astrometry of H2O masers in the Galactic star-forming regions ON1 and ON2N with the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA). The measured distances to ON1 and ON2N are 2.47±0.11 kpc and 3.83±0.13 kpc, respectively. In the case that ON1 and ON2N are on a perfect circular rotation, we estimate the angular rotation velocity of the Galactic rotation at the Sun (the ratio of the Galactic constants) to be 28 ± 2 km s−1 kpc−1 using the measured distances and three-dimensional velocity components of ON1 and ON2N. This value is larger than the IAU recommended value of 25.9 km s−1 kpc−1, but consistent with other results recently obtained with the VLBI technique.

With RXTE data ranging from 1997 August to 1998 May, we detected 8 type I X-ray bursts from the atoll source 4U 1735–44. The bursts are present at all the branches, and most occur at an inferred low mass accretion rate. We find no correlation between the peak flux of the bursts and the mass accretion rate. The results are different from that of 4U 1728-34, whose bursts' peak flux are anti-correlated with the mass accretion rate.

We have performed a search for faint companions around the nearest massive galaxies. We see a clear signature of clustering of faint objects, both in projected separation and in velocity offset. The inferred satellite luminosity functions confirm that the abundance of faint satellites seen in the Local Group is typical of other nearby systems.

We study the impact of a hadron-quark phase transition on the maximum neutron-star mass. The hadronic part of the equation of state relies on the most up-to-date Skyrme nuclear energy density functionals, fitted to essentially all experimental nuclear mass data and constrained to reproduce the properties of infinite nuclear matter as obtained from microscopic calculations using realistic forces. We show that the softening of the dense matter equation of state due to the phase transition is not necessarily incompatible with the existence of massive neutron stars like PSR J1614–2230.

Most of the exoplanet science is dependent on the stellar knowledge. One of them that has to be understood is the magnetic activity when we search for planets with radial velocity or photometry measurements. The main shape of stellar activity and spots properties have to be understood, for example, to choose the best targets to search for low-mass planets in the habitable zone or to derive the accurate parameters of a planetary system. With that aim, we show in this presentation how these studies lead to give clues on spots latitudes and on the long term variation of stellar activity. The properties of magnetic activity on the low rotators solar-type stars are not easily reachable by other techniques (spectropolarimetry or Doppler imaging) and these studies should be used to constrain theories of stellar dynamo.

We present the results of an extensive survey of superflares on late-type stars (G, K, and M-type main sequence stars) using the Kepler satellite data. Wefound about 6,800 superflares on late-type stars from the data of about 120,000 stars observed over 500 days. The total bolometric energy of superflares in oursample ranges from 1032 erg to 1036 erg. Our data suggest that the occurrencefrequency of superflares depends on the surface temperature and the rotationperiod of stars. Superflares on M-type stars occur about 10-100 times morefrequently than those on G-type stars. Our results suggest that the average frequency ofsuperflares releasing 1034–1035 erg of energy (100-1,000 times larger than the largestsolar flares) on M-type stars and Sun-like stars is once in 10 years and once in a few thousand years respectively.

Chondrite meteorites are the building blocks of the solar nebula, out of which our Solar System formed. They are a mixture of silicate and oxide objects (chondrules and refractory inclusions) that experienced very high temperatures, set in a matrix that remained cold. Their prevalence suggests that they formed through a very general process, closely related to stellar and planet formation. However the nature and properties of the responsible mechanism have remained unclear. The evidence for a hot solar nebula provided by this material seems at odds with astrophysical observations of forming stars. These indicate that the typical temperatures of protostellar disks are too low to melt and vapourise silicate minerals at the radial distances sampled by chondrule-bearing meteorites. Here, we show that processing of precursors in a protostellar outflow at radial distances of about 1 – 3 AU can heat them to their melting points and explain their basic properties, while retaining association with the colder matrix.

Very Long Baseline Interferometry studies of different maser species observed at multiple epochs allow complementary measurements of the 3-dimensional velocity field of gas close (≲ 103 AU) to massive young stellar objects. Here, we review our recent results toward the high-mass star-forming region G23.01–0.41, where all the strongest molecular maser transitions known to date cluster within 2000 AU from the center of an hot molecular core and are associated with a so called extended green object. The overall maser kinematics reveals a common outflowing motion from a central object; the details of the spatial distribution and velocity field of each maser species hint at the presence of different dynamical structures: a collimated jet, a wide-angle wind, and a flattened rotating core. We further compare the simultaneous presence of maser emission from different molecular species with a recent evolutionary sequence for masers associated with massive young stellar objects.

The quantum mechanical calculations for the A6Σ+ − X6Σ+ system of the CrH molecule were done in order to obtain its energy level structure and transition strenghts both in the absence and in the presence of a magnetic field. Employing this results and solving a set of the radiative transfer equations, we calculated the Stokes profiles for the entire 0-0 band for different magnetic field strengths and orientations. We show that the CrH lines produce a considerable polarization signal (up to 20%) at 0.5 - 10 kG. Furthermore, the polarization signal shows a significant asymmetry (broad-band polarization) that arises from the Paschen-Back effect in the individual CrH lines. An example of the signal, as it can be observed, is provided.

We have recently developed a set of equations of state based on the nuclear energy density functional theory providing a unified description of the different regions constituting the interior of neutron stars and magnetars. The nuclear functionals, which were constructed from generalized Skyrme effective nucleon-nucleon interactions, yield not only an excellent fit to essentially all experimental atomic mass data but were also constrained to reproduce the neutron-matter equation of state as obtained from realistic many-body calculations.

To search for kinematic evidence of the existence of the Galactic bar, we observed 10 methanol maser sources at the near end of the bar with VERA (VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry). From these observations, we obtained absolute proper motions of eight sources based on the phase-referencing technique. We compared the motions with the predictions of three simple models in a 3D plane. This comparison showed that a non-flat circular rotation model and a dynamical model including a bar potential reproduce the observed data better than a flat rotation model. In addition, the bar model suggests that the inclination angle of the Galactic bar is around 35°, which is consistent with previous studies.

Using Eggletons code the evolution of cataclysmic variables (CVs) is investigated. CVs might suffer the loss of mass and angular momentum during their evolution, we present the models of CVs with mass loss and angular momentum loss (AML) due to gravitation wave radiation (GR) and/or magnetic braking (MB). It is found that the loss of mass and angular momentum has significant influence on the evolution of CVs, and that the change of the star structure or their atmosphere properties is a possible mechanism which underlies a sudden change in the rate of AML owing to MB.

We present preliminary astrometric results aimed at understanding the lifetime of circumstellar disks and potential for planet formation. We have obtained parallaxes to stars in the TW Hydrae, Upper Scorpius, and Chamaeleon I stellar associations. These enable new estimates for the ages of the stars. We are also performing the Carnegie Astrometric Planet Search of nearby low mass stars for gas giant planets on wide orbits. We have our first candidate around a mature brown dwarf.

The increasing number of spectral survey telescopes that are soon commissioned for exploring the universe will confront us with many new challenges on the use of optical fibers. A fiber-switching problem for telescope's terminal instrument is as important as a well-known problem of positioning fibers on telescope's focal plane. For a modern survey telescope, it generally feeds several terminal instruments with different functions. According to the observation, these instruments are seriously in need of switching fiber-link with telescope as soon as possible. A kind of multi-fiber coupling plugs introduced in this paper will work for switching fiber-link between Multi-object Exoplanet Search Spectral Interferometer (MESSI) and low resolution spectrograph at Guoshoujing telescope (LAMOST). It includes an inserter, a receptor and a socket in general. The number of simultaneously coupling fibers is up to 25 per group, and any broken fiber in a single plug can be replaced by a new standard one soon without wasting entire fiber bundle. In addition, Most of mechanical part can also be individually replaced when a normal loss happens after a long working time. The related test result is given in detail, including the machining precision and coupling efficiency.

This contribution discusses the prospect of using millimeter interferometry to survey molecular gas in a large number of galaxies beyond the distance of Virgo.

Globular clusters (GCs) are excellent tracers for the formation, assembly and evolutionary history of their host galaxies. However, their origin and their role in galaxy evolution are still unclear. There are accumulating evidences that a significant fraction of GCs in massive galaxies (e.g., M 31) are accreted during their assembly history (e.g., Mackey et al. 2010). In this contribution, we report the discovery of a possible stream of accreted GCs in M 31 using data from the literature. Unlike previous substructures of GCs identified as clumps in the phase and metallicity space (Ashman, Keith & Christina 1993), the members of this stream are widely spread but tightly correlated in the position-velocity space (see Fig. 1). The tight correlation suggests that they possibly follow very similar orbits. A number of stellar streams have been discovered in the outer halo of M 31 (e.g., Ibata et al. 2001; McConnachie et al. 2009), one of which may be physically associated with the GC stream. If the association is established, it will not only provide a key evidence for accretion origins of some GCs in M 31, but also place a strong constraint on the mass distribution of M 31.