AGILE is a space mission of the Italian Space Agency dedicated to γ-ray astrophysics, launched in 2007. AGILE performed dedicated real-time searches for possible γ-ray counterparts of gravitational wave (GW) events detected by the LIGO-Virgo scientific Collaboration (LVC) during the O2 observation run. We present a review of AGILE observations of GW events, starting with the first, GW150914, which was a test case for future searches. We focus here on the main characteristics of the observations of the most important GW events detected in 2017, i.e. GW170104 and GW170817. In particular, for the former event we published γ-ray upper limits (ULs) in the 50 MeV – 10 GeV energy band together with a detailed analysis of a candidate precursor event in the Mini-Calorimeter data. As for GW170817, we published a set of constraining γ-ray ULs obtained for integrations preceding and following the event time. These results allow us to establish important constraints on the γ-ray emission from a possible magnetar-like remnant in the first ~1000 s following T0. AGILE is a major player in the search of electromagnetic counterparts of GW events, and its enhanced detection capabilities in hard X-ray/MeV/GeV ranges will play a crucial role in the future O3 observing run.

Observationally measuring the location of the H2O snowline is crucial for understanding the planetesimal and planet formation processes, and the origin of water on Earth. The velocity profiles of emission lines from protoplanetary disks are usually affected by Doppler shift due to Keplerian rotation and thermal broadening. Therefore, the velocity profiles are sensitive to the radial distribution of the line-emitting regions. In our work (Notsu et al. 2016, 2017), we found candidate water lines to locate the position of the H2O snowline through future high-dispersion spectroscopic observations. First, we calculated the chemical composition of the disks around a T Tauri star and a Herbig Ae star using chemical kinetics. We confirmed that the abundance of H2O gas is high not only in the hot midplane region inside the H2O snowline but also in the hot surface layer and the photodesorption region of the outer disk. The position of the H2O snowline in the Herbig Ae disk exists at a larger radius from the central star than that in the T Tauri disk. Second, we calculated the H2O line profiles and identified that H2O emission lines with small Einstein A coefficients (∼10−6 − 10−3 s−1) and relatively high upper state energies (∼ 1000K) are dominated by emission from the hot midplane region inside the H2O snowline, and therefore their profiles potentially contain information which can be used to locate the position of the H2O snowline. The wavelengths of the H2O lines which are the best candidates to locate the position of the H2O snowline range from mid-infrared to sub-millimeter, and the total line fluxes tend to increase with decreasing wavelengths. We investigated the possibility of future observations using the ALMA and mid-infrared high-dispersion spectrographs (e.g., SPICA/SMI-HRS). Since the fluxes of those identified lines from a Herbig Ae disk are stronger than those of a T Tauri disk, the possibility of a successful detection is expected to increase for a Herbig Ae disk.

Owing to their extreme crowding and high and variable extinction, stars in the Galactic Bulge, within ±2° of the Galactic plane, and especially those in the Nuclear Star Cluster, have only rarely been targeted for an analyses of their detailed abundances. There is also some disagreement about the high end of the abundance scale for these stars. It is now possible to obtain high dispersion, high S/N spectra in the infrared K band (~2.0 − 2.4 µm) for these giants; we report our progress at Keck and VLT in using these spectra to infer the composition of this stellar population.

Additional acceleration of protons and electrons passing through a 3D reconnecting current sheet (RCS) of the solar corona and heliosphere is investigated with PIC approach. The simulation confirms spatial separation of electrons and protons and generation of a polarisation electric field induced by separated particles. In the heliospheric current sheet with a weak magnetic field there are two populations of particles: transit and bounced. The transit particles (both protons and electrons) are accelerated to high energies while the bounced electrons fail to reach the midplane. Instead they form an electron cloud of horseshoe or medallion types at some distance D from its midplane, which is larger for bigger guiding field magnitudes. These energetic electrons and protons appearing near the HCS boundaries can be a great danger for the satellites crossing the sector boundaries.

We have analyzed the Debrecen Photoheliographic Data (DPD) and the Solar Optical Observing Network (SOON) sunspot group data during the period 1977 – 2015 and find that during the maximum of solar cycle 23 there is a large difference in the mean meridional motion of sunspot groups determined from DPD and SOON data.

The IAU was founded in 1919 “to facilitate the relations between astronomers of different countries where international co-operation is necessary or useful” and “to promote the study of astronomy in all its departments”. These aims have led the IAU throughout the century of its existence, but the way it has tried to fulfil them has changed. We have tried to trace the changing role of the IAU in the international astronomical community through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The IAU has striven – occasionally struggled – to protect international scientific cooperation across the deep political divides that characterized the 20th century, while maintaining an important function in the context of the rapidly evolving science itself and the changing fabric of institutions involved in astronomy. We especially argue how the emphasis of the IAU’s activities has shifted from the first aim – facilitating collaboration by organizing meetings and defining common standards – to the second aim: promoting astronomy by outreach and development programs.

The coronal field typically reorganizes itself to attain a force-free field configuration. We have evaluated the power law index of the energy distribution f(E) = f0E−α by using a model of relaxation incorporating different profile functions of winding number distribution f(w) based on braided topologies. We study the radio signatures that occur in the solar corona using the radio data obtained from the Gauribidanur Radio Observatory (IIA) and extract the power law index by using the Statistic-sensitive nonlinear iterative peak clipping (SNIP) algorithm. We see that the power law index obtained from the model is in good agreement with the calculated value from the radio data observation.

Planets form in disks around young stars. The planet formation process may start when the protostar and disk are still deeply embedded within their infalling envelope. However, unlike more evolved protoplanetary disks, the physical and chemical structure of these young embedded disks are still poorly constrained. We have analyzed ALMA data for 13CO, C18O and N2D+ to constrain the temperature structure, one of the critical unknowns, in the disk around L1527. The spatial distribution of 13CO and C18O, together with the kinetic temperature derived from the optically thick 13CO emission and the non-detection of N2D+, suggest that this disk is warm enough (≳ 20 K) to prevent CO freeze-out.

The LIGO detectors have just completed a successful and exciting observation run. Both facilities are now undergoing upgrades and commissioning, including doubling the circulating power in the interferometer which will increase LIGO’s sensitivity above 100 Hz. This paper motivates the power increase and discusses the problems in general that arise with higher power and the progress to date with addressing them. Topics include input power noise coupling, parametric instability, and thermal effects.

Benjamin Baillaud was appointed president of the First Executive Committee of the International Astronomical Union which met in Brussels during the Constitutive Assembly of the International Research Council (IRC) on July 28th, 1919. He served in this position until 1922, at the time of the First General Assembly of the IAU which took place in Rome, May 2–10. At that time, Baillaud was director of the Paris Observatory. He had previously been director of the Toulouse Observatory for a period of 30 years and Dean of the School of Sciences of the University of Toulouse. He specialized in celestial mechanics and he was a strong supporter of the “Carte du Ciel” project; he was elected chairman of the permanent international committee of the Carte du Ciel in 1909. He also was the founding president of the Bureau International de l’Heure (BIH) and he was directly involved in the coordination of the ephemerides at an international level. In this paper, we present some of his activities, particularly those concerning international programmes, for which he received international recognition and which eventually led to his election in 1919 to the position of first president of the IAU. We also briefly recount the very first meetings and years of the IAU.

The four main findings about the age and abundance structure of the Milky Way bulge based on microlensed dwarf and subgiant stars are: (1) a wide metallicity distribution with distinct peaks at [Fe/H] = -1.09, -0.63, -0.20, +0.12, +0.41; (2) a high fraction of intermediate-age to young stars where at [Fe/H] > 0 more than 35 % are younger than 8 Gyr, (3) several episodes of significant star formation in the bulge 3, 6, 8, and 11 Gyr ago; (4) the ‘knee’ in the α-element abundance trends of the sub-solar metallicity bulge appears to be located at a slightly higher [Fe/H] (about 0.05 to 0.1 dex) than in the local thick disk.

PSR B0943+10 is an old non-recycled pulsar which for decades has been mostly known for its rapid and spontaneous radio mode switching. Recently, Hermsen et al. (2013) discovered correlated changes in the thermal X-ray emission from the polar cap, thus demonstrating that radio modes are not just a product of the local changes in the radio emission region, but a sign of some global magnetospheric transformation. At about the same time, owing to the commissioning of the new generation of low-frequency radio arrays, the broadband observations at the lowest edge of ionospheric transparency window became available. At these radio frequencies profile morphology and the single-pulse properties of PSR B0943+10’s emission become very dynamic, providing details not only about the emission itself, but also about the conditions in the polar gap. Here, I will present the recent results of the LOFAR observations of PSR B0943+10 and discuss their contribution to the multiwavelength picture.

Sophisticated instrumentation dedicated to studying and monitoring our Sun’s activity has proliferated in the past few decades, together with the increasing demand of specialized space weather forecasts that address the needs of commercial and government systems. As a result, theoretical and empirical models and techniques of increasing complexity have been developed, aimed at forecasting the occurrence of solar disturbances, their evolution, and time of arrival to Earth. Here we will review groundbreaking and recent methods to predict the propagation and evolution of coronal mass ejections and their driven shocks. The methods rely on a wealth of data sets provided by ground- and space-based observatories, involving remote-sensing observations of the corona and the heliosphere, as well as detections of radio waves.

We report another 6.7 GHz methanol maser burst in the high mass star region G33.641-0.228. The flare is in its second component at vLSR = 59.6 km s−1 and was observed in August-September 2016 by VIRAC radio telescope RT-32 in Irbene, Latvia. Several bursts of the second spatial component of G33.641-0.228 have been reported previously by Fujisawa et al. The maximum peak flux density of the source was measured to reach 343 Jy that is 13 times increase from its ground level. Significant oscillations were discovered during the decay phase indicating a more complex burst mechanism that cannot be explained by a simple heating of the region.

Pulsars were discovered on the basis of their individual pulses, first by Jocelyn Bell and then by many others. This was chart-recorder science as computers were not yet in routine use. Single pulses carry direct information about the emission process as revealed in the detailed properties of their polarization characteristics. Early analyses of single pulses proved so dizzyingly complex that attention shifted to study of average profiles. This is turn led to models of pulsar emission beams—in particular the core/double-cone model—which now provides a foundation for understanding single-pulse sequences. We mention some of the 21stC single-pulse surveys and conclude with a brief discussion of our own recent analyses leading to the identification of the pulsar radio-emission mechanism of both slow and millsecond pulsars.

We construct two classes of the magnetohydrostatic equilibria of the axisymmetric flux tubes with twisted magnetic fields in the stratified solar atmosphere that span from the photosphere to the transition region. We built the models by incorporating specific forms of the gas pressure and poloidal current in the Grad-Shafranov equation. This model gives both closed and open field structure of the flux tube. The other open field model we construct is based on the self-similar formulation, where we have incorporated specific forms of the gas pressure, poloidal current and two different shape functions. We study the homology of the parameter space that is consistent with the solar atmosphere and find that the estimation of the magnetic structure inside the flux tubes is consistent with the observation and simulation results of the magnetic bright points.

We have measured the IMF of the inner Galaxy using ~3000 OGLE-III microlensing events. Each event’s timescale depends on both the lens mass, and the velocities and distances of the lens and source. New dynamical models were used provide the distribution of distances and velocities, and thereby measure the lens mass distribution. Using a power-law or log-normal parameterisation the resultant IMF is indistinguishable from local measurements by Kroupa or Chabrier respectively. The lenses lie in the inner Galaxy where the stars are mostly ~10 Gyr old and formed on a fast α-element enhanced timescale thereby constraining IMF variability with the properties of the collapsing gas cloud. Furthermore microlensing measures the stellar mass budget, including dark remnants, to low mass. Stars contribute most of the mass in the inner Galaxy with a low fraction remaining for dark matter. Reconciling this with local dark matter estimates requires a core or shallow cusp in its profile.

We have studied the consequences of interacting coronal mass ejections (CMEs) of June 13-14, 2012 which were directed towards Earth and caused a moderate geomagnetic storm with Dst index ~ −86 nT. We analysed the in-situ observations of the solar wind plasma and magnetic field parameters obtained from the OMNI database for these CMEs. The in-situ observations show that the interacting CMEs arrive at Earth with the strongest (~ 150 nT) Sudden Storm Commencement (SSC) of the solar cycle 24. We compared these interacting CMEs to a similar interaction event which occurred during November 9-10, 2012. This occurred in the same phase of the solar cycle 24 but resulted in an intense geomagnetic storm (Dst ~ −108 nT), as reported by Mishra et al. (2015). Our analysis shows that in the June event, the interaction led to a merged structure at 1 AU while in the case of November 2012 event, the interacted CMEs arrived as two distinct structures at 1 AU. The geomagnetic signatures of the two cases reveal that both resulted in a single step geomagnetic storm.

Discovery of strongly-lensed gravitational wave (GW) sources will unveil binary compact objects at higher redshifts and lower intrinsic luminosities than is possible without lensing. Such systems will yield unprecedented constraints on the mass distribution in galaxy clusters, measurements of the polarization of GWs, tests of General Relativity, and constraints on the Hubble parameter. Excited by these prospects, and intrigued by the presence of so-called “heavy black holes” in the early detections by LIGO-Virgo, we commenced a search for strongly-lensed GWs and possible electromagnetic counterparts in the latter stages of the second LIGO observing run (O2). Here, we summarise our calculation of the detection rate of strongly-lensed GWs, describe our review of BBH detections from O1, outline our observing strategy in O2, summarize our follow-up observations of GW170814, and discuss the future prospects of detection.