Astronomers have opportunities at least twice a year to use partial, annular, or total eclipses of the Sun, or planetary transits, to interest the public in astronomy through their observations. It is important to provide accurate information about the pleasures and hazards of looking toward the Sun. The International Astronomical Union helps by providing knowledgeable information from experienced eclipse observers.

We carried out 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations of a subcluster moving in turbulent ICM by including anisotropic heat conduction. Since magnetic fields stretched along the subcluster surface suppress the heat conduction across the front, cold fronts are formed and sustained.

We discuss the results of HI survey of the LMC and a catalog of HI clouds.

Young, massive star clusters (YMCs) are the most notable and significant end products of violent star-forming episodes triggered by galaxy collisions and close encounters. The question remains, however, whether or not at least a fraction of the compact YMCs seen in abundance in extragalactic starbursts, are potentially the progenitors of (≳10 Gyr) old globular cluster (GC)-type objects. If we could settle this issue convincingly, one way or the other, the implications of such a result would have far-reaching implications for a wide range of astrophysical questions, including our understanding of the process of galaxy formation and assembly, and the process and conditions required for star (cluster) formation. Because of the lack of a statistically significant sample of YMCs in the Local Group, however, we need to resort to either statistical arguments or to the painstaking approach of case-by-case studies of individual objects in more distant galaxies.

The idea of starting an astronomical site testing in Antarctica began during a congress organized by French Académie des Sciences, in 1992, and entitled ‘Recherches polaires-Une Stratégie pour l'an 2000’. At this time, one of us (Vernin 1994) gave a proposal for an astronomical site testing in Antarctica. This proposal was rapidly followed by a meeting between Al Harper (from ‘Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica’, Chicago), Peter Gillingham (from the Anglo Australian Observatory, Australia) and Jean Vernin (from Nice University) at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in 1993. It was decided to investigate what was the astronomical quality of South Pole station, each institute bringing its own participation: CARA, the South Pole infrastructure, University of New South Wales, a PhD student and Nice University its expertise and instruments.

We present and discuss recent new results from the Spitzer Space Telescope and their impact on cosmology.

We explore the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect of a sample of 31 clusters in the three-year data of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), and detect strong SZ signal at the ~10 σ level. By comparing the co-added SZ profile of the sample clusters with the prediction based on the X-ray observations of ROSAT and XMM-Newton, we find the SZ profiles are consistent with the isothermal β-model of intracluster medium (ICM), but the central region (<0°.2) may be contaminated by the central radio sources in the clusters. We derive a mean outer radius of the ICM distribution at ~1.2 ± 0.4rvir (68% CL). The existence of the ICM outer edge could be the first evidence of ICM accretion shock, which is important for understanding the formation and evolution of clusters. We also estimate the mean gas mass fraction of the ICM from the overall amplitude of the SZ signals as fgas = 0.10 ± 0.05, which is consistent with the X-ray observation and lower than the cosmic average baryon fraction.

Reversed granulation is predicted by numerical simulations and has been observed in the wings of chromospheric lines. Here we present reversed granulation in high spatial, spectral and temporal resolution, extracted from the photospheric Fe I 7090.4 Å line core intensities, once taking into account the velocity effects. Correlations with the continuum are studied in terms of smoothing, time delay and temporal evolution. The latter appears to be superimposed with an oscillatory signal that suggests the presence of gravity waves in the mid-photosphere.

We consider the multiplicity of stellar systems with (combined) magnitude brighter than 6.00 in Hipparcos magnitudes. We identify 4555 such bright systems, and the frequencies of multiplicities 1, 2, . . , 7 are found to be 2722, 1412, 299, 86, 22, 12 and 2. We also consider the distributions of periods of orbits and sub-orbits. For the even more restricted set of 474 systems with VH ≤ 4.00 the proportions of higher multiples up to sextuple are progressively larger, suggesting incompleteness in even the relatively well-studied larger sample.

We construct a Monte-Carlo algorithm that will generate systems with roughly the observed multiplicities and orbital parameters, taking account of selection effects.

The Carina Nebula possesses the brightest soft diffuse X-ray emission among the Galactic giant HII regions, but the origin has not been known yet. The XIS1 back-illuminated CCD camera onboard the Suzaku X-ray observatory has the best spectral resolution for extended soft sources so far, and is therefore capable of measuring these key emission lines in the soft diffuse plasma. Suzaku observed the Carina nebula on 2005 Aug. 29. The XIS1 spectra of the Carina nebula clearly showed spatial variations in emission line strengths. In the south, the spectrum showed strong L-shell lines of iron ions and K-shell lines of silicon ions, while in the north these lines were much weaker. Fitting the spectra with an absorbed thin-thermal plasma model with kT ~ 0.2, 0.6 keV and NH ~ −2 × 1021 cm−2 showed that the silicon and iron abundance is about 2–3 times higher in the south than in the north. Because of its large size (~40 pc), the diffuse emission in the Carina nebula might have been produced by an old supernova, or a super shell produced by multiple supernovae.

The results of a pilot study on the intrinsic 3D distribution of stars in edge-on disk galaxies are presented. The 3D disk structure of a sample of 12 edge-on galaxies has been reconstructed through a direct deprojection of the observed two-dimensional images. The deprojection method – which utilises the so called Fourier slice theorem and assumes axial symmetry – has been tested with a large set of artificial galaxy models seen under a variety of inclinations (i = 80–90°) and with different spatial dust and optical depths distributions.

We identify disk features (spiral arms, bars, or edge-on disks) in a significant fraction of Virgo cluster early-type dwarfs. These galaxies are disk-shaped and are an unrelaxed cluster population that possibly formed out of infalling progenitors. Some display spiral arms with grand design features that cannot be the mere remainders of potential late-type spiral progenitors.

The luminosity function (LF) is one of the most fundamental quantities to be observed in Astronomy. It is determined by the combined effects of the various physical phenomena that drive galaxy formation and evolution, therefore it is a very useful tool to constrain cosmological models.

Episodic activity in super-massive black holes is shown by radio galaxies exhibiting ‘double-double’ radio morphologies (Subrahmanyan et al. 1996, Schoenmakers et al. 2000). Spectacular examples showing a renewal of beam activity in the form of new beams emerging within relic radio lobes of previous activity have placed the phenomenon of recurrence in AGN outflows on a firm footing.

By using the SUMSS and WENSS GRG samples, we infer that on timescales of order a few million years, low luminosity radio sources are more likely to exhibit episodic behaviour in the accretion on to their supermassive black holes as compared to the more powerful radio galaxies.

The parallax of the Pleiades has been mired in controversy ever since the very first astrometric measures in the late 1880s. Over a century later, the measures from the HIPPARCOS catalogue gave results which were inconsistent with the distance inferred from the fitting of the colour-magnitude diagram. We briefly review here the debate and focus on the various attempts made at solving the problem, and especially those using binary stars. The only double-lined eclipsing binary found so far in the Pleiades, HD 23642, provides not only the final answer to the problem but also, through detailed state-of-the-art analyses, the fundamental calibration for binaries in more distant clusters and hence in the Local Group. We discuss some of the various sources of systematic uncertainties that limit, so far, the accuracy of the measured stellar parameters to about 1% and the progress that is required to break this barrier.

The relation of the surface brightness, a parameter related to the apparent magnitude and the angular diameter of a star, with a colour index is used to determine various stellar parameters. Eclipsing spectroscopic binaries can even be used as a distance indicator. In this work, we use a number of low-mass eclipsing binaries, whose parameters have been accurately determined, to refine the Barnes-Evans–like relation FV − (Ic − K) introduced by Amado et al. (1999), a relation more suitable for the low temperature of these cool stars.

It has been shown quite recently (Morales-Rueda et al. 2003) that dB stars, extreme horizontal branch (EHB) objects in high probability all belong to binary systems. We study in detail the mass and angular momentum loss from the giant progenitors of sdB stars in an attempt to clarify why binarity must be a crucial factor in producing EHB objects. Assuming that the progenitors of EHB objects belong to binaries with initial separations of a roughly a hundred solar radii and fill in their critical Roche lobes while close to the tip of red giant branch, we have found that considerable shrinkage of the orbit can be achieved due to a combined effect of angular momentum loss from the red giant and appreciable accretion on its low mass companion on the hydrodynamical timescale of the donor, resulting in formation of helium WD with masses roughly equal to a half solar mass and thus evading the common envelope stage. A simple approximative analytical formula for mass loss rate from Roche lobe filling giant donor has been proposed depending on mass, luminosity and radius of donor.

If the standard disk-blackbody approximation is used to estimate black hole (BH) masses in ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), the inferred masses are ∼ 1000 M⊙. However, we argue that such an approximation cannot be applied to ULXs, because their disks are only radiating a small fraction of the accretion power, and are therefore cooler than they would be in a thermal-dominant state, for a given BH mass. Instead, we suggest that a different phenomenological approximation should be used, based on three observable parameters: disk luminosity, peak temperature, and ratio between thermal and non-thermal emission. This method naturally predicts masses ∼ 50 M⊙, more consistent with other theoretical and observational constraints.

The Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO) is a lightweight web service unifying twelve major solar data archives. With the VSO, users can simultaneously search for data from 50 space- and ground-based instruments covering the time period from 1915 to the present.

The products of optical wide-field survey are very valuable for their own purposes like the studies of large scale structure of galaxies, evolution of galaxies, Galactic structure and so on. At the same time optical view of sky will provide basic reference for the observation at other wavelength ranges. For this reason Palomar all sky survey has been used for various astronomical studies over 50 years. Now in the era of electronic devices, digital archives, and powerful computer systems, modern observation will replace the Palomar all sky survey.