In this paper we summarize the results of radio studies of the distribution functions (number, energy distribution and pitch angle distribution) of the energetic particles that are produced at the time of solar flares. We consider the clues and constraints they impose on the mechanisms of acceleration, bearing in mind that radio evidence implies that there are at least two stages of acceleration in many flares.

In the following sections we discuss the distribution functions of the particles resulting from (a) first phase acceleration, (b) first and/or second phase and (c) second phase acceleration. Table I summarizes the results.

It has generally been accepted that moving type IV bursts are generated as synchrotron radiation from energetic electrons high in the solar corona (Boischot and Denisse 1957). At 80 MHz the peak brightness temperature is usually ~ 108 K and the radiation becomes highly circularly polarized as the burst decays. This has led several authors (Kai 1969; Dulk 1970, 1973; Schmahl 1972; Robinson 1974, 1977; Nelson 1977) to the conclusion that the radiation comes from mildly relativistic (~ 100 keV) electrons and occurs at low harmonics of the gyro-frequency (gyro-synchrotron radiation). We present evidence of moving type IV bursts at 43, 80 and 160 MHz with brightness temperatures of ~ 109 K, and one at 43 MHz as high as 1010 K. The number (~ 1033) of energetic (≥ 1 MeV) electrons which is required in order to explain such high brightness temperatures by incoherent gyro-synchrotron emission is very large and near the upper limit for the number of fast electrons accelerated in the second phase of a solar flare. If amplification takes place a smaller number of electrons with energies ~ 100 keV would be required.

Studies of coronal transients observed in white-light (Gosling et al., 1976) have shown that fast-moving events (≤ 400 km s-1) are closely associated with flares and with type II and IV radio bursts while slow-moving events are not. We now report the first detection of the radio counterpart of a slow-moving transient. The event of 1974 January 21 is shown to be visible on maps of the quiet Sun made at a frequency of 80 MHz.

For many years we have had evidence from solar radio bursts of violent mass motions in the solar corona: type II bursts reveal the passage of shock waves through the solar corona, and moving type IV bursts show that plasma and magnetic field travel to great distances without any sign of slowing down.

Many authors (e.g. Magun et al. 1975) have debated the question ‘does solar type IV continuum emission arise through Langmuir wave conversion or through gyro-synchrotron emission?’ Culgoora radio spectrograph and heliograph observations of the late stages of a recent (7 September 1977) type II, IV event showed both type IV* (continuum) and transient type III (electron-beam) emission coming from the same source, high above the solar limb. These observations suggest that this particular type IV continuum arose through a mechanism similar to that of the type III, probably fundamental Langmuir-wave emission, in a corona with a tenfold enhancement of plasma density.

Observations of the distribution of millimetre-wavelength brightness over the quiet Sun provide an important test of models of the solar chromosphere. The author and colleagues have recently carried out two investigations of the quiet-Sun brightness at 3 mm wavelength — one by means of a total eclipse observation (Labrum et al. 1978) and the other by aperture synthesis with a two-element interferometer (Archer et al. 1978). I present here a preliminary discussion of these and other measurements of millimetre-wavelength brightness distributions and of their interpretation in terms of chromospheric structure.

In this paper, two models for the origin of modulation lanes in Jovian radiation are discussed. The results of calculations of dynamic spectra due to the Cotton-Mouton effect in Jupiter’s plasma envelope and due to modulation of the frequency spectrum in the source are reproduced. The characteristics of the theoretical spectra are then described. This offers the possibility of solving the problem of modulation lanes by comparison of observed Jovian dynamic spectra with the theoretical ones.

The University of Tasmania has been operating muon telescopes since mid-1971 in an underground power station operated by the Hydro-Electric Commission at Poatina in Northern Tasmania. The equipment is located beneath ~ 150 m of rock, corresponding to a total absorption depth of ˜ 365 hg cm-2. The initial pilot experiment was reported (Fenton and Fenton 1972) at the May 1972 meeting of A.S.A., and results from the first two full years of operation were presented to the Hobart meeting of A.S.A. two years later (Fenton and Fenton 1974). We now have complete data for the 5-year period 1972-1976, together with provisional data for 1977.

The necessity of having accurate oscillator strengths in astrophysical applications is well known. The apparent discrepancy which existed between the solar and meteoritic abundance of iron is just one example of the problems which can arise from poor f-values. An excellent critique of methods for determining both absolute and relative f-values has been given by Blackwell & Collins (1972). Their comments on life-time techniques provide a clear indication of both the advantages and difficulties associated with these techniques: “In principle, a life-time method, as exemplified by the technique of beam foil spectroscopy, described for example by Wiese (1970), has the fundamental advantage that in some restricted circumstances its application does not depend upon a temperature measurement or any assumption of themodynamic equilibrium in the source: in addition it gives an absolute result without the need of an absolute number density of atoms. The hope is sometimes expressed that the method of beam foil spectroscopy will yield oscillator strengths of the required accuracy. In practice, the technique suffers from the difficulty that although the life-time of an excited state can be measured with reasonable accuracy, it is also necessary to measure in a separate experiment the branching ratios for radiative de-excitation. As these ratios are usually measured by an arc method, the accuracy of the final oscillator strengths is limited by the deficiencies of this source. Also, some atoms in the beam may be excited to higher levels than the one being examined, and because of the nature of the initial excitation is unknown, radiative de-excitation (cascading) takes place to this lower level in a way that is wholly unpredictable. This difficulty is especially important for levels of low excitation.” In this talk techniques will be described for overcoming the cascading problem in beam foil spectroscopy and for measuring the associated branching ratios.

A 4-m telescope for mm-wave observations, particularly of spectral lines, was erected in mid-1976 at Epping by Krupp Ltd., Rheinhausen. A cooled mixer receiver was installed on the telescope in April 1977 and a series of test observations made during the remainder of the year, subject to the availability of the receiver and the multi-channel filter bank which were shared with the Parkes 64-m telescope.

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.

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 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.

Both radial and non-radial motions have been suggested at various stages to explain the observational peculiarities of the β Cephei variables. The non-radial possibility has been investigated most recently by Smith (1977) and Stamford and Watson (1977). We here examine the radial shock proposal by generating a series of isothermal radial shock models in suitable early B star atmospheres. Odgers (1955) has long advocated such a model in connection with the large amplitude variable BW Vul. The observations of Goldberg, Walker and Odgers (1976) clearly show a radial velocity ‘stillstand’ effect and line splitting in this star. We discuss our models in the context of these two phenomena.

In variable star work, the frequent observations of comparison stars during a night often clearly indicate the presence of either changes in extinction or changes of zero point of the photometric system, or both effects simultaneously. In a magnitude — air mass plot, the graph is not linear, but is usually a loop. These loops are well known to observers but so far very little has been published about this problem. Young’s (1974) chapters are perhaps the only exception.

The Fleurs Synthesis Telescope (FST) has been used to map a number of bright, southern galactic HII regions at 1415 MHz. Descriptions of the FST can be found in Christiansen (1973) and associated papers. For the observations reported here, both the east-west and the north-south arms of the cross were used resulting in beamshapes which are nearly circular with half-power widths of 50” arc. The maps have been “cleaned” using a standard process (Högbom 1974).

The radio source associated with Circinus X-1 has been observed several times at Molonglo since 1970 and some of these observations have already been reported (Whelan et al. 1977). In 1977 the source was again observed, this time for 17 consecutive days and during these observations the position and flux of the reference source 1505-56.9 were more precisely determined. A few sporadic observations have also been made in 1978. This note brings together the new observations and all the old measurements which have been corrected on the basis of the new data for 1505-56.9 Other observations have been made which were not calibrated against this source but these have not been included in this note since they are less well calibrated.

The MC2 and MC3 catalogues cover two strips approximately 2° wide centred on declinations +11° and +16.5°. MC2 runs from 11h 28m to 01h 23m and MC3 from 13h 31m to 04h 11m (Sutton et al. 1974). Optical identifications up to 17h 00m have been’published (Hazard and Murdoch 1977) and identifications for the remainder exist in preliminary form (Hazard, Zotov and Murdoch, in preparation). Optical spectra are being obtained chiefly at Lick Observatory (Smith et al. 1977) and this programme is now approaching completion.

One of the critical parameters for a theory of emission from QSOs is the time scale of the variations in this emission. For many sources, changes occur faster than the light travel time across the source disk size as determined by VLBI observations. If the decimetre flux density is assumed to come from a small core, appropriate to the time scale of its variations then the brightness temperature must be far greater than ~ 1012 K allowed by the incoherent synchrotron process. These difficulties have been examined (Jones and Burbidge 1973; Burbidge and Stein 1975) using the QSO 2251 + 158 (3C454.3) as an example against which to test the theory. In this paper, I examine the time scale of the variations in 46 sources and show that most of these vary significantly within 2 years. The most rapid changes are in the QSOs 0736 + 017 and 1504–166 which have changed 40% within a few months — an order of magnitude faster than 2251 + 158.

It has been accepted since the mid-1950’s that the LMC is a flat rotating body, with its plane inclined at an angle of about 27° to the line of sight and so nearly face on, and its line of nodes running 10° west of north (de Vaucouleurs and Freeman 1972). The inclination is inferred from the ellipticity of the outermost optical and radio isophotes but there has been no convincing way to fix its sense — whether the E or W side is nearer. Some years ago the late Dr David Thackeray suggested to one of us (SCBG) that this could be done by comparing the magnitudes of cepheids on the extreme E and W sides of the Cloud. With the discovery of the Magellanic Stream and the great increase of interest in the spatial geometry and dynamics of the Clouds and Galaxy complex, the sense of the tilt of the LMC has become a matter of importance, and we decided to go ahead with the project.