The low scintillation noise and the long continuous darkness areamong the unique properties of the Dome-C site on the eastAntarctic plateau. Ultra-high precision optical photometry istherefore among the techniques best suited for this particularsite. We propose a telescope (ICE-T) optimized for ultra-high andultra wide field photometry for Dome C. It consists of two 60 cmoptical ultra-wide-field Wynne-Schmidt telescopes and one 18 cmnarrow-field Maksutov spectrophotometric telescope on a singlemount. ICE-T is currently a team effort of the GermanAlfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar Research, the ItalianUniversities of Padova and Perugia, the INAF Observatory Catania,and the Catalonian IEEC in Barcelona, Spain, and the AIP, withcollaboration from the University of New South Wales, Australiaand the University of St. Andrews, UK. In this paper, I discusssome of the many problems associated with sub-milli-magphotometry.

This contribution aims to give a brief overview of the nature of the dust in the interstellar medium, its rôle there, where it comes from, what happens to it while it resides there and what are some key outstanding dust issues that yet need further attention.

The possible role of neutral PAHs as catalysts for H2 formation in theinterstellar medium is investigated by a combined experimental and density function theorystudy of the superhydrogenation of coronene (C24H12). Thecalculations suggest efficient hydrogenation of both edge and centre sites, along withcompeting abstraction reactions to form H2 in a series of catalytic cycles.Scanning tunneling microscopy and thermal desorption measurements have been used toprovide direct evidence of the formation of superhydrogenated coronene as a result ofexposure to D atoms. Lower limit estimates for the cross-sections of1.8 × 10-17, 5.5 × 10-18 and 1.1 × 10-18 cm2for the formation of singly, doubly and triply hydrogenated coronene are derived. Theresults suggest that superhydrogenated PAHs may play an important role in H2formation in the ISM.

Interstellar ices are widely observed in the infrared spectra of regions where stars and planetary systems form. Photochemical and thermal evolution of these ices is simulated and studied in our laboratory where the resulting production of complex organic residues is routinely performed. Observations of their variability with slightly different starting chemical conditions can be performed by means of infrared spectroscopy. Organic residues have interesting chemical properties that make them good potential candidates for prebiotic chemistry. Numerous other analytical methods (GC-MS, HPLC, mass spectrometry, etc.) can be combined to refine the knowledge of their chemical composition and structure. We present here some results on the obtained organic residue resulting from subsequent heating and sublimation of the irradiated ices which show the formation of some macromolecular species.

In its first part, this paper summarizes recent work on the mass andshape of the Galactic dark halo. The second part presents a review ofthe large-scale structure of the Milky Way, and of the evidence thatthe inner Galaxy is dominated by baryonic matter. This is brieflycompared with the predictions of ΛCDM and MOND. Finally, asummary is given of bulge formation from clumpy, gas-rich disks, aprocess which may give rise to old, disk-like, α-rich bulgessimilar to the Galactic bulge.

Spectral unmixing is an important issue to analyze remotely sensed hyperspectral data. This involves the decomposition of each mixed pixel into its pure endmember spectra, and the estimation of the abundance value for each endmember. Although linear mixture models are often considered because of their simplicity, there are many situations in which they can be advantageously replaced by nonlinear mixture models. In this chapter, we derive a supervised kernel-based unmixing method that relies on a pre-image problem-solving technique. The kernel selection problem is also briefly considered. We show that partially-linear kernels can serve as an appropriate solution, and the nonlinear part of the kernel can be advantageously designed with manifold-learning-based techniques. Finally, we incorporate spatial information into our method in order to improve unmixing performance.

We review some important observed properties of massive stars. Then we discuss how mass loss and rotation affect their evolution and help in givingbetter fits to observational constraints. Consequences for nucleosynthesis at different metallicities are discussed. 
Mass loss appears to be the key feature at high metallicity, while rotation is likely dominant at low and very low metallicities. We discuss various indications supporting the view thatvery metal-poor stars had their evolution strongly affected by rotational mixing. Many features, likethe origin of primary nitrogen at low metallicity, that of the C-rich extremely metal-poor halo stars, of He-rich stars in massive globular clusters, of the O-Na anticorrelation in globular clusters may be related to the existence of a population of very fast rotating metal-poor stars that we tentatively call the spinstars.A fraction of these spinstars may also be the progenitors of GRB in very metal-poor regions. They may avoid pair instability explosion due to the heavy mass loss undergone during their early evolutionary phases and be,dependent on their frequency, important sources of ionising photons in the early Universe.

Empirical star formation laws from the last 20 years are reviewed with a comparison to simulations. The current form in main galaxy disks has a linear relationship between the star formation rate per unit area and the molecular cloud mass per unit area with a timescale for molecular gas conversion of about 2 Gyr. The local ratio of molecular mass to atomic mass scales nearly linearly with pressure, as determined from the weight of the gas layer in the galaxy. In the outer parts of galaxies and in dwarf irregular galaxies, the disk can be dominated by atomic hydrogen and the star formation rate per unit area becomes directly proportional to the total gas mass per unit area, with a consumption time of about 100 Gyr. The importance of a threshold for gravitational instabilities is not clear. Observations suggest such a threshold is not always important, while simulations generally show that it is. The threshold is difficult to evaluate because it is sensitive to magnetic and viscous forces, the presence of spiral waves and other local effects, and the equation of state.


Future cosmology space missions will concentrate on measuring thepolarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which potentiallycarries invaluable information about the earliest phases of the evolutionof our universe. Such ambitious projects will ultimately be limited bythe sensitivity of the instrument and by the accuracy at whichpolarized foreground emission from our own Galaxy can be subtractedout. We present the PILOT balloon project which will aim atcharacterizing one of these foreground sources, the polarization ofthe dust continuum emission in the diffuse interstellar medium. ThePILOT experiment will also constitute a test-bed for usingmultiplexed bolometer arrays for polarization measurements.


An overview of non-directional direct detection methods is given. The currently leading experiments for spin independent WIMPs interactions are using simultaneous measurement of two quantities for event-by-event background discrimination in cryogenic bolometers and noble gas like xenon. Besides these, several interesting techniques have been developped, each having a specific advantage concerning e.g. energy threshold lowering or strong immunity to ionizing radiations background. Technologies used and most recent results about spin-dependent and spin-independent cases are presented.

NEWAGE is a direction-sensitive dark matter search experiment with a gaseous time-projection chamber. We improved the direction-sensitive dark matter limits by our underground measurement. In this paper, R&D activities sinse the first underground measurement are described.

The interstellar medium (ISM) is subject, on one hand, to heating and cooling processes that tend to segregate it into distinct phases due to thermal instability (TI), and on the other, to turbulence-driving mechanisms that tend to produce strong nonlinear fluctuations in all the thermodynamic variables. In this regime, large-scale turbulent compressions in the stable warm neutral medium (WNM) dominate the clump-formation process rather than the linear developent of TI. Cold clumps formed by this mechanism are still often bounded by sharp density and temperature discontinuities, which however are not contact discontinuities as in the classical 2-phase model, but rather “phase transition fronts”, across which there is net mass and momentum flux from the WNM into the clumps. The clumps grow mainly by accretion through their boundaries, are in both thermal and ram pressure balance with their surroundings, and are internally turbulent as well, thus also having significant density fluctuations inside. The temperature and density of the cold and warm gas around the phase transition fronts fluctuate with time and location due to fluctuations in the turbulent pressure. Moreover, shock-compressed diffuse unstable gas can remain in the unstable regime for up to a few Myr before it undergoes a phase transition to the cold phase, and is furthermore constantly replenished by the turbulence. These processes populate the classically forbidden density and temperature ranges. Since gas at all temperatures appears to be present in bi- or tri-stable turbulence, we conclude that the word “phase” applies only locally, surrounding phase transition sites in the gas. Globally, the word “phase” must relax its meaning to simply denote a certain temperature or density range.


Here results of numerical radiation hydrodynamical simulations arepresented which explore the energetic impact of massive stars on the interstellar medium. We study the evolution of the ambient gas around isolated massive stars in the mass range between 15 and 85 M๏ in order to analyze the formation of structures and further the transfer and deposit of the stellar wind and radiation energy into the circumstellar medium until the stars explode as a supernovae. The derived energy transfer efficiencies are much smaller thananalytically estimated and should be inserted into chemo-dynamicalevolutionary models of galaxies as appropriate parameter values. As an additional issue the element release in the Wolf-Rayet phases and its detectability have been investigated for comparison with observations.


We review the theories and observations of high-mass star formation emphasizing the differences with those of low-mass star formation. We hereafter describe the progress expected to be achieved with Herschel, thanks notably to Key Programmes dedicated to the earliest phases of high-mass star formation.

L134N is a cold, starless cloud, very high above the galactic plane,close to us and well delineated in continuum dust emission maps. Thiscloud is considered to be representative of oxygen rich dark clouds(with the presence of SO, SO2, NO, ...). It is thus a goodreference together with TMC-1 to test astrochemical models. Thanks toISO, SCUBA and near IR wide field cameras, the detailed study of thedust has become possible in such cold and dark clouds. In parallel,progress in radiotelescope receiver sensitivity now allows to map weaklines on large surfaces. We have thus started a project to study bothdust and a few gaseous key species (CO, CS, SO and N2H+) toaddress several questions. We want to assess the quantity of dust andgas all over the cloud, study possible C18O and/or C17Odepletion towards dense cores, evaluate the structure of the gas, theabundance of CS and SO to possibly estimate the chemical age of thecloud (time dependent models show that the CS/SO ratio diminishes withtime) and evaluate the rare isotope abundances, especially 17Oand 34S in a first step. To constrain the molecular abundanceswith the highest possible confidence, we have observed severaltransitions for each species and each isotopomer. Though we haveobserved far less species than Dickens et al. [1], wehave done it on a larger area, including thus the strongest C18Opeak and two other peaks, with a better signal-to-noise ratio. Most ofthe data are already acquired. We present here preliminary results.

We study the relationship between the H2 and CO abundances in simulated molecular clouds using a fully dynamical model of magnetized turbulence coupled to a detailed chemical network. We find that the CO-to-H2 conversion factor for a given molecular cloud, the so-called X-factor, is determined primarily by the mean extinction of the cloud, rather than by its metallicity. Our results explain the discrepancy observed in low metallicity systems between cloud masses derived from CO observations and other techniques such as infrared emission, and predict that CO-bright clouds in low metallicity systems should be systematically larger and/or denser than Milky Way clouds.

We give in this short communication the principle of the densification of a large classical on-axis aperture,with aperture central obscuration and spider arms into a full circular unobstructed aperture, forapplication to high-contrast coronagraphy. An example is shown using a VLT like aperture. In space, such atechnique would allow to produce a perfect null of the star image using coronagraphic techniques such as the4QC or the PKC, at the expense of a small reduction of the transmitted light. The drawback of the techniqueis that a surprisingly very small ZOF is obtained, if the telescope full resolution is considered. However,if a loss of resolution of a factor 2 is accepted, then the system might behave as a perfect imaging system.The technique is found useless for ground based observations with the Strehl ratios reached at the presenttime.

Betelgeuse is one of the most magnificent stars in the sky, and one of the nearest red supergiants. Astronomers gathered in Paris in the Autumn of 2012 to decide what we know about its structure, behaviour, and past and future evolution, and how to place this in the general context of the class of red supergiants. Here I reflect on the discussions and propose a synthesis of the presented evidence. I believe that, in those four days, we have achieved to solve a few riddles.

Galactic Archaeology has recently been challenged by the fact that stars observed now in a certain location are not necessarily born there, but could have been kicked out from their birth places by different internal and/or external processes. We have made one of the first attempts to quantify how important stellar mixing could be in the case of our Galaxy, and how much of the original chemodynamical correlations would have been destroyed by such processes. Our unique approach has allowed us to conclude that although stellar mixing does take place in our Galaxy, many of the main relations between chemistry and age suggested by pure chemical evolution models are still generally valid. However, stringent constraints can be obtained only when stellar ages will be known for a large number of field stars. This is certainly one of the goals of Gaia, but in the meantime it has been shown that Asteroseismology can also provide a way to estimate ages of giants, even at large distances from the Sun. Here we present the first results obtained with a sample of CoRoT stars that have APOGEE spectra, in the framework of the CoRoGEE collaboration. The results coming from this still very recent approach (i.e. asteroseismology of Galactic populations) reveals that we might be on the right track in terms of quantifying radial mixing, but these results also suggest the chemical enrichment of the Galactic disk(s) to have been more complex than previously envisaged. Intriguingly, we find that the use of [α/Fe]-ratios as proxy for age, although generally valid, breaks down for some stars.

High precision photometry as performed by the CoRoT and Kepler satellites on-board instruments has allowed to detect stellar oscillations over the whole HR diagram. Oscillation frequencies are closely related to stellar interior properties via the density and sound speed profiles, themselves tightly linked with the mass and evolutionary state of stars. Seismic diagnostics performed on stellar internal structure models allow to infer the age and mass of oscillating stars. The accuracy and precision of the age determination depend both on the goodness of the observational parameters (seismic and classical) and on our ability to model a given star properly. They therefore suffer from any misunderstanding of the physical processes at work inside stars (as microscopic physics, transport processes...). In this paper, we recall some seismic diagnostics of stellar age and we illustrate their efficiency in age-dating the CoRoT target HD 52265.