The aim of the MIMAC project is to detect non-baryonic Dark Matter with a directional TPC. The recent Micromegas efforts towards building a large size detector will be described, in particular the characterization measurements of a prototype detector of 10  ×  10 cm2 with a 2 dimensional readout plane. Track reconstruction with alpha particles will be shown.


In the past years a wealth of observationsallowed to unravel the structural properties of the Dark Matter Halos around spirals. First, their rotation curves followan Universal profile (URC) that can be described in terms of an exponential thin stellar disk and adark halo with aconstant density core, whose relative importance increases with galaxy luminosity. Careful studies of individual objects, from dwarfs to giants, reveal that dark halos have a core, whose size r0 correlates with the central density ρ0.These properties are in serious discrepancy with the cuspy density distribution predicted by N-body simulations in collisionless ΛCDM Cosmology.

The advent of deep, wide, accurate, digital photometric surveys exemplified by the SloanDigital Sky Survey (SDSS) has had a profound impact on studies of the Milky Way. In thepast decade, we have transitioned from a scarcity to an (over)abundance of precise, wellcalibrated, observations of stars over a large fraction of the Galaxy. The avalanche ofdata will continue throughout this decade, culminating with Gaia and LSST. This newreality will necessitate changes in methodology, habits, and expectations both on the sideof the large survey projects as well as the astrophysics community at large. We argue,based on the experience with SDSS, that surveys should release data as early and often aspossible incorporating incremental improvements in each subsequent release, as opposed toholding off for a single, big, final release. The scientific community will need toreciprocate by performing analyses and (re-analyses) appropriate to the current fidelityof the released data, understanding that these are continually evolving and improvingproducts.

The proposed design for PILOT is a general-purpose, wide-field (1°) 2.4 m, f/10 Ritchey-Chrétien telescope, with fast tip-tilt guiding, for 0.5-25 µm. The design allows both wide-field and diffraction-limited use at these wavelengths. The expected overall image quality, including median seeing, is 0.28-0.3'' FWHM from 0.8-2.4 µm. Point source sensitivities are estimated.

We characterize PAH populations in 22 metal-poor blue compact dwarf galaxies (BCDs), 16of which have an oxygen abundance 12+log(O/H) ≲ 8. This is the largest sample ever studiedat such low metallicities. The relative PAH intensities of the 6.2, 7.7, 8.6 and11.3 μm features in these BCDs suggest a deficit of small PAH carriers,or alternatively, an excess of large ones at these low abundances.

Our laboratories have recently calculated a set of collision coefficients characterizing the efficiency of energy transfer between helium and/or hydrogen and a large variety of interstellar molecules. We have considered with molecules ranging from light hydrides, observed by the Herschel Space Observatory, to medium size molecules, observed by mm antennas, to heavy complex organic molecules, observed also in the cm range. We present a review of recent theoretical results obtained in our laboratories, for various kinds of commonly observed molecules.

The accretion and desorption processes of gas molecules on cold grains play an important role in the evolution of dense clouds and circumstellar regions around YSOs. Given the low temperatures in dark cloud interiors (10–20 K), thermal desorption is negligible and most molecules are expected to stick to grains leading to depletion in the gas phase. Laboratory simulations of these processes under astrophysically relevant conditions are required for their understanding. The use of ultra-high-vacuum conditions minimalizes contamination by background water accretion. This introduces a radical improvement, allowing the study of photodesorption and the detection of products at very low abundances in a water-free ice matrix. We studied UV-photoprocessing of pure NH3 and N2 ices under ultra-high-vacuum conditions using the Interstellar Astrochemistry Chamber. The photodesorbed molecules, and the volatile products released upon photolysis and warm-up, were detected in situ by quadrupole mass spectroscopy.

ISOGAL, one of the most important programs observed by ISO, is a7-15 μm ISOCAM survey, with 6" pixels and sensitivity around 15 mJy,of ≈18 deg2 in the Galactic Plane mostly interior to |l| = 30°. In combination with near-infraredDENIS data, ISOGAL data allow detailed studies of cold stellar populationsand Galactic structure in regions highly obscured throughout the innerGalaxy. Version 1 of the ISOGAL Point Source Catalogue is submitted forpublication and will be available through CDS. It contains about 105 stars,with associated KJI DENIS data for most of them. Most of these sources areAGB stars and red giants, with a number of dusty young stars.

Traces of heavy metal in cool DZ white dwarfs may be attributed to the accretion of circumstellar dust. This dust is thought to originate from the tidal disruption of some rocky material, they provide a unique opportunity to study the composition of extra-solar planetary systems. The determinations of precise atmospheric parameters and abundances require accurate description of the line profiles of the identified features. We present absorption spectra of Na-He and Ca+-He for the conditions prevailing in cool white dwarfs.

In this paper, we describe two fully Bayesian algorithms that have been previously proposed to unmix hyperspectral images. These algorithms relies on the widely admitted linear mixing model, i.e. each pixel of the hyperspectral image is decomposed as a linear combination of pure endmember spectra. First, the unmixing problem is addressed in a supervised framework, i.e., when the endmembers are perfectly known, or previously identified by an endmember extraction algorithm. In such scenario, the unmixing problem consists of estimating the mixing coefficients under positivity and additivity constraints. Then the previous algorithm is extended to handle the unsupervised unmixing problem, i.e., to estimate the endmembers and the mixing coefficients jointly. This blind source separation problem is solved in a lower-dimensional space, which effectively reduces the number of degrees of freedom of the unknown parameters. For both scenarios, appropriate distributions are assigned to the unknown parameters, that are estimated from their posterior distribution. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are then developed to approximate the Bayesian estimators.

The operation of any base or expedition to Antarctica is regulatedby the mutual agreement among nations in the “Antarctic Treaty”.This treaty deals with the major aspects of life in Antarctica andits main principles and provisions are described in what follows.

Dwarf galaxies are currently enjoying wide popularity as more sensitive telescopes are able to unveil their dust emission properties in the mid-infrared to submillimetre wavelengths. Once thought to be an insignificant component of their ISM, the dust in dwarf galaxies can now be studied in greater detail with ISO and Spitzer and soon, Herschel, as well as new ground-based submillimetre telescopes. The mid-infrared to millimetre spectral energy distributions reveal global dust properties which look to be different from more metal-rich starburst galaxies, or our own Galaxy: a) deficit of PAHs; b) abundant very small grains; c) excess submillimetre emission that has been interpreted as very cold (<10 K) dust, thus containing up to 50% of the dust mass of the galaxies. The molecular clouds, and the morphology of the ISM appear to differ dramatically. These properties can be explained by the low metallicity environments and the young massive star formation activity, supernovae activity and chemical abundances.

In this work the full orthogonal splitting of Bel andBel-Robinson tensors in a four dimensional spacetime is calculated. We also present the orthogonal splitting of the covariant divergence of Bel-Robinson tensor in vacuum and use the resulting expressions (dynamical laws of superenergy in vacuum) to introduce the concept of intrinsic superenergy radiative state. It is hoped that these results will contribute to the long-standing question of the physical interpretation of the Bel and the Bel-Robinson tensors. 


Dome Fuji is potentially one of the best astronomical sites in Antarctic plateau. We have a plan to build a 2-m class infrared telescope at Dome Fuji, and have been evaluating the site since the 2006/2007 Antarctic summer. We present the outline of a 2-m class telescope project and some results of our SODAR measurements.

Near-infrared spectro-photometry, at a spectral resolution of ~100, allows to characterize a great variety of stellar sources, from late-typegiants to emission line stars. Various components of the inter-stellar medium can also be traced. This technique can therefore be very fruitful, in addition, for studies of star forming regions, the Milky Way and external galaxies.The outstanding environmental conditions that are expected at Dome C should be favorable to carry out spectro-photometric surveys in the 1 to 2.5 μm region, that would usefully complement space-borne projects.

Magnetic field generation in the Universe is still an open problem. Possible mechanisms involve the Weibel instability, due to anisotropic phase-space distributions, as well as the Biermann battery, due to misaligned density and temperature gradients. These mechanisms can be reproduced in scaled laboratory experiments. In this contribution we estimate the relative importance of these two processes and explore the laser-energy requirements for producing Weibel dominated shocks.

We investigated the dependence of a spectral lag against energy band based on 28 brightGRBs registered by SPI and IBIS/ISGRI of INTEGRAL observatory. It was found that forsimple structure bursts or well separated pulses of multipulse bursts the spectral lag canbe approximated by the relation ofτ ~ Alg(E), where A is a positiveparameter, which correlates with pulse duration. We have not found any negative lag insimple structure bursts or in well separated pulses. While investigating the time profileof the whole burst negative lag may appear due to different spectral parameters of thepulses.

There is an ongoing debate in the literature concerning the effects of averaging out inhomogeneities (“backreaction”) in cosmology. In particular, some simple models of structure formation studied in the literature seem to indicate that the backreaction can play a significant role at late times, and it has also been suggested that the standard perturbed FLRW framework is no longer a good approximation during structure formation, when the density contrast becomes nonlinear. In this work we use Zalaletdinov's covariant averaging scheme (macroscopic gravity or MG) to show that as long as the metric of the Universe can be described by the perturbed FLRW form, the corrections due to averaging remain negligibly small. Further, using a fully relativistic and reasonably generic model of pressureless spherical collapse, we show that as long as matter velocities remain small (which is true in our model), the perturbed FLRW form of the metric can be explicitly recovered. Together, these results imply that the backreaction remains small even during nonlinear structure formation, and we confirm this within the toy model with a numerical calculation.