At the IAU General Assembly in Patras in August 1982, Commission 33 set up a Working Group on the Galactic Constants. The Working Group is charged with developing a critical review of the values of the main galactic constants, for publication before the General Assembly in 1985. It has not been specifically charged to come up with a proposal for a revised set of values, although it can do so if it wishes.

Sunspot regions often form complexes of activity that may live for several solar rotations, and represent a major component of the Sun's magnetic activity. It had been suggested that the close appearance of active regions in space and time might be related to common subsurface roots, or “nests” of activity. EUV images show that the active regions are magnetically connected in the corona, but subsurface connections have not been established. We investigate the subsurface structure and dynamics of a large complex of activity, NOAA 10987-10989, observed during the SOHO/MDI Dynamics run in March-April 2008, which was a part of the Whole Heliospheric Interval (WHI) campaign. The active regions in this complex appeared in a narrow latitudinal range, probably representing a subsurface toroidal flux tube. We use the MDI full-disk Dopplergrams to measure perturbations of travel times of acoustic waves traveling to various depths by using time-distance helioseismology, and obtain sound-speed and flow maps by inversion of the travel times. The subsurface flow maps show an interesting dynamics of decaying active regions with persistent shearing flows, which may be important for driving the flaring and CME activity, observed during the WHI campaign. Our analyses, including the seismic sound-speed inversion results and the distribution of deep-focus travel-time anomalies, gave indications of diverging roots of the magnetic structures, as could be expected from Ω-loop structures. However, no clear connection in the depth range of 0-48 Mm among the three active regions in this complex of activity was detected.

High-resolution echelle spectroscopic observations taken with the FEROS spectrograph at the ESO 2.2-m telescope confirm the binary nature of the dMe stars EUVE J0825−16.3 and EUVE J1501−43.6, previously reported by Christian & Mathioudakis (2002). In these binary systems, emission of similar intensity from both components is detected in the Na i D1 & D2, He i D3, Ca II H&K, Ca II IRT and Balmer lines. We have determined precise radial velocities by cross-correlation with radial velocity standard stars, which have allowed us to obtain for the first time the orbital solution of these systems. Both binaries consist of two nearly equal M0V components with an orbital period shorter than 3.5 days. We have analyzed the behaviour of the chromospheric activity indicators (variability and possible flares). In addition, we have determined its rotational velocity and kinematics.

A survey of Kiso UV-excess galaxies (KUGs) has been made using the 105-cm Kiso Schmidt telescope. We selected three galaxies of Ic-type (i.e. irregulars with clumpy HII regions). KUGs 1618+373, 1624+404 and 1626+413, and observed them together with a clumpy irregular galaxy Mrk 297 to clarify their star formation activity (Maehara et al. 1986).

We present a simple two-wind model for the evolution of the Magellanic Cloud planetary nebulae (PN) which reproduces the observed density / radius / ionised mass relationships, and serves to define the geometrical relationship between the ionised nebula and the star. From self-consistent photoionisation modelling of 78 Magellanic Cloud PN, we have constructed the H-R Diagram for the central stars, and have derived both the chemical abundances and the nebular parameters. We find that the central stars have masses generally between 0.55 and 0.7 M⊙. Type I PN have more massive precursors, and show clear evidence for the Third dredge-up episode and for the dredge-up of ON processed material. The expansion velocity of the nebula is closely correlated with the position of the central star on the H-R Diagram, proving that the nebula undergoes continuous acceleration. Excluding Type I PN, the mean abundances derived for the LMC and the SMC agree with those derived from H II regions and evolved, radiative SNR.

(Solar Phys.). It is known that the sources of metric type IV radio bursts generally move outwards with speed of a few to several hundred km s−1 in the solar atmosphere and envelope (e.g., Kundu, 1965; Smerd and Dulk, 1971; Wild and Smerd, 1972). These sources consist of magnetic lines of force being stretched out from the flare regions and relativistic electrons being trapped by these field lines. They are often observed as expanding magnetic bottles (e.g., Smerd and Dulk, 1971). As a result of this expanding motion, the frequency range of type IV burst extends with time to lower frequencies, because of the decrease of both magnetic field intensity and energy of radiating electrons (Dulk, 1970; Sakurai, 1973a). By considering the observed expansion rate of emission frequency range, it seems possible to estimate the pattern of expansion of these radio sources: in doing so, we have analyzed the onset time differences between microwave and metric emissions of type IV bursts by referring to the longitudinal positions of parent solar flares on the solar disk, since the dependence of these differences on parent flare positions in the solar longitude seems to give a clue to estimate a general pattern of the expansion of magnetic bottles. The result thus analyzed is shown in Figure 1. Furthermore, peak flux intensities at metric frequencies for these type IV bursts have been also analyzed as a function of the longitude positions of parent flares (Figure 2). The results shown in Figures 1 and 2 are explained by assuming that, while moving outwards, the magnetic bottle tends to expand a few 10 deg east of the meridian plane which crosses the flare region (Sakurai, 1973a).

In the context of the search of asteroid families (i.e. identification of minor planets as potential fragments of an old bigger body), the calculation of proper elements plays an important role. They are quasi-invariants of the motion, obtained by a double averaging process of the restricted N-body problem; firstly the osculating elements are averaged over the short periodic terms (namely the longitudes of the asteroid and of the perturbing planets) so to get the mean elements, and secondly, the mean elements are averaged over the long periodic terms (longitudes of the pericenters and of the nodes of the asteroid and of the perturbing planets) to obtain the proper elements.

Probable dust counterparts of arching structures are looked for in two cases, (a) the Eridanus expanding shell, Heiles (1976) and (b) the extended Sco-Cen feature, Weaver (1977). Apparently the color excess data may be used to derive distance and dimension estimates of these structures.

The HRTS (High Resolution Telescope and Spectrograph) instrument is a high spectral (0.05 Å) and spatial (<1 arc sec) resolution spectrograph with a slit length of 900 arc sec on the solar disk (see Bartoe and Brueckner 1975, 1978). HRTS contains in addition a double grating, zero dispersion broadband spectroheliograph which images the spectrograph slit jaw plate (see Cook et al. 1983). The central wavelength is tunable by changing the grating geometry. Hα images are also photographed from the slit jaw plate image. HRTS has been flown four times as a rocket payload, and will fly in April 1985 as one of the solar experiments aboard Spacelab 2. The four rocket flights of the HRTS program have each been customized for a particular scientific objective. For the fourth flight, because the original hardware was utilized as the basis of the Spacelab HRTS, the opportunity was used to design and build a new rocket HRTS instrument specialized for observations at the solar limb. In this configuration the photographic speed was increased, a new curved slit was fabricated, and the spectroheliograph was modified for limb observations. The scientific observing program was a study of structure and short term temporal evolution at the limb, with a comparison of quiet and coronal hole areas.

Few studies concern the H alpha profile of the Be stars and it is difficult to do a fine analysis of the line structure, and of its variations from the results obtained with different resolutions and accuracies.

Then, it was useful to apply modern technics for the observation of this line to get an homogeneous material, sensitive enough to show fast variations of the order of few minutes because an accurate photometry is available using linear response receivers.

The Galactic center supermassive black hole is surrounded by orbiting clouds of gas. These clumps of gas may collide with each other, losing angular momentum and plunging towards the center. Observations of X-ray reflection from molecular clouds surrounding the Galactic center show evidence for enhanced activity of Sagittarius A* during the past few hundred years. These observations enable us to place constraints on the nature of past accretion events responsible for this enhanced activity. We model the source intrinsic luminosity of Sgr A* using multiple accretion events occurring at various moments in time, characterized by a range of angular momentum We also applied our scheme to the case of G2 cloud in the Galactic center.

We study the general version of the inverse problem for planar trajectories and for autonomous dynamical systems possessing three integrals, i.e., for a given three-parametric family of curves f(x,y,a,b)=c we find the potential V(x,y) for which these curves are orbits of a unit mass. All possible cases, depending on the preassigned function f, are classified and in each case the necessary and sufficient conditions for the.existence of a solution are established. Among the examples is the case of the Keplerian conic sections which is studied in detail.

Several examples of observational evidence of possible variations of geometrical and physical characteristics of the Broad Line Regions (BLR) of AGN on the time-scale of years are listed. Cases of accretion disk size variations and variable input of jets in BLR formation are presented.

The present short notes on cosmology start with two conclusions based on observational data. The first of them is the well-known conclusion that the Universe from the global point of view is at the present epoch of its evolution in a uniform and isotropic expansion. If we accept the very convincing arguments of Bondi (1962) that the geometry of the cosmic space is Riemannian, its properties are described at the present epoch of the cosmic evolution by the well-known Robertson-Walker metric expressing the cosmological principle (Robertson, 1935, 1936; Walker, 1936). The form of the geodesical lines depends on the assumed theory of gravitation. For instance, in the closed Friedman world model they are cycloids with a singularity at the start of the expansion.

In this paper we review the theories which have been proposed to account for the extra-galactic X-ray background. Although there is still no detailed theory, one may devise reasonable models which account in a natural way both for the intensity and the spectral shape over the whole energy band, provided that cosmological evolutionary effects are included. A model based on Compton scattering of cosmic black body photons by relativistic electrons in radio sources at large redshifts (z ≳ 4) seems to give the most satisfactory explanation. However, the data are not yet good enough to discriminate against alternative models.

A discussion of the recent observations in the soft X-ray region (< 1 keV), and their relevance to the physics of interstellar and intergalactic gas, is given. The available data are somewhat confusing, but it seems that this part of the spectrum may still be consistent with a simple extrapolation of the non-thermal spectrum at higher energies, though various workers have claimed the detection of a new component probably due to hot intergalactic gas. If this interpretation is correct one may deduce interesting conclusions about the state of ionization and composition of the intergalactic gas, because of the importance of the absorption effects in this energy band.

Also it appears that the Galaxy is more transparent than one would deduce from 21-cm observations. However, due to the lack of observational data, no firm conclusions can be reached.

We present the energy distribution of three hard X-ray sources H2252-035, 4U1849-31 and 2A0526-328 identified with intermediate polars. The ultraviolet and optical continuum can be well described by the standard disc model but this requires rather large discs and high accretion rates. Other possible contributions to the energy distribution are estimated. The predicted high accretion rates as well as the amplitude of the optical pulsations are in disagreement with the observed X-ray luminosity suggesting the existence of an unseen soft X-ray or extreme UV component.

In 2014, a 179-orbit allocation of Hubble Space Telescope time anchored a massive reverberation-mapping program on the well-studied Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 5548. Supporting imaging and spectrophotometric observations were provided by Swift, Chandra, Spitzer, and a world-wide network of ground-based telescopes. Understanding the data remains a significant challenge, partly because the level of detail is far beyond what has been seen before and partly because the behavior of the AGN was not typical of its past behavior. Based on analysis to date, the following conclusions can be reached: (1) the AGN accretion disk has a temperature profile that is consistent with that predicted by the Shakura–Sunyaev model, but is about three times larger than expected; (2) at least part of the broad-line region appears to be a Keplerian disk seen at intermediate inclination, and (3) the broad-line emission response from the far side of the disk is weaker than expected.

This paper discusses the present status of a preliminary inspection of the plates obtained in the Michigan objective-prism survey of the entire southern sky. A very large number of peculiar stars, and of normal supergiants as well, have been noted and lists of these are being prepared for publication.

We present the results of the astrometric monitoring of βPictoris b, the closest exoplanet imaged so far, using all VLT/NaCo data we obtained so far.