Massive black holes (MBHs) are nowadays believed to reside in most local galaxies. Studies have also established a number of relations between the MBH mass and properties of the host galaxy such as bulge mass and velocity dispersion. These results suggest that central MBHs, while much less massive than their hosts (~ 0.1%), are linked to the evolution of galactic structure. When did it all start? In hierarchical cosmologies, a single big galaxy today can be traced back to the stage when it was split up in hundreds of smaller components. Did MBH seeds form with the same efficiency in small proto-galaxies, or did their formation have to await the buildup of substantial galaxies with deeper potential wells? I briefly review here some of the physical processes that are conducive to the evolution of the massive black hole population. I will discuss black hole formation processes for “seed” black holes that are likely to take place at early cosmic epochs, and possible observational tests of these scenarios.

Water is an abundant molecule in the Cosmos. It has exploitable and unique spectroscopic and physical properties and has been found to be ubiquitous in places that we would expect in the standard model of solar system formation and nebular condensation: beyond the snow line in outer solar system planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. However, water is also an important constituent of planetary bodies (dominating at least one of their surfaces) in the inner solar system, likely indicating significant mixing between inner and outer solar system reservoirs of water during planetary accretion and the early history of the solar system. Water has played a critical role in the differential evolution of the terrestrial planets Venus, Earth, and Mars, and the concept of the “habitable zone” where liquid water could be stable on an Earth-like planet provides a starting point for assessing the habitability of worlds in our solar system and beyond. Examples of potentially habitable environments outside this zone in our own solar system warn us that this concept should only be a guide, however-important exceptions will no doubt occur. Recent discoveries of past liquid water and abundant present subsurface ice on Mars, of water reservoirs in unexpected places like the poles of Mercury and the Moon and the subsurface of Enceladus, of water in circumstellar disks and in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, and the expectation of the discovery of water on Earth-like worlds in the habitable zones around other stars make this an exciting time in the study of water on planets both in our own solar system, and beyond.

During its early evolution the Universe provided a laboratory to probe fundamental physics at high energies. Relics from those early epochs, such as the light elements synthesized during primordial nucleosynthesis when the Universe was only a few minutes old, and the cosmic background photons, last scattered when the protons (and alphas) and electrons (re)combined some 400 thousand years later, may be used to probe the standard models of cosmology and of particle physics. The internal consistency of primordial nucleosynthesis is tested by comparing the predicted and observed abundances of the light elements, and the consistency of the standard models is explored by comparing the values of the cosmological parameters inferred from primordial nucleosynthesis with those determined by studying the cosmic background radiation.

The brilliant outcome of some 30 years of helioseismology spreads over a wide range of topics. Some highlights relevant to the cause of the solar activity cycle are listed up. The rotation profile in the solar convective zone is discussed as an important source of the dynamo mechanism. The kinematic dynamo model is described in the linear approximation, and the condition for the solar type dynamo is derived. It is shown that comparison of this condition with the rotation profile determined from helioseismology is useful to identify the possible seats of the dynamo.

The Master's degree “Outils et Systèmes de l'Astronomie et de l'Espace” (OSAE, “Astronomical and Space-based Systems Engineering”) is intended for students interested in Astronomy and Space technology. Students undergo a comprehensive training in partnership with international-level laboratories and with leading private companies. The degree provides physicists with a wide range of skills, appropriate for those whose intention is to participate in subsystems, equipment and engineering systems, and also for future project managers, working in the aerospace industry or similar technological industries or in national and European agencies. The 1-year course is given in collaboration with national and international institutions, laboratories and industries. It includes an extended training period (5 to 6 months) and a theoretical and practical specialization given by university and industrial teachers. It benefits from the network of laboratories associated with the Astronomy and Astrophysics doctorate school of the Île-de-France.

The integrated Balmer lines of unresolved stellar systems have been widely used as age indicators, since they are sensitive to the temperature of the main sequence turn-off. However, the existence of “non-canonical” stellar stages such as hot horizontal branch stars and blue straggler stars (BSSs) can lead to underestimations of the true stellar population ages. Using an optimized Hβ index in conjunction with HST/WFPC2 color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), we find that Galactic globular clusters of similar metallicity exhibit a large scatter in their Hβ strengths, which does not correlate with their CMD-derived ages. Instead, we demonstrate that the specific frequency of BSSs is responsible for the observed Hβ scatter at intermediate-to-high metallicity, in the sense that, at fixed metallicity, higher BSS ratios lead to larger integrated Hβ strengths. Therefore, the specific frequency of BSSs sets a fundamental limit on the accuracy for which integrated spectroscopic ages can be determined for globular clusters and, probably, other stellar systems like galaxies. The observational implications of this result are discussed.

In the last years, a fully general relativistic definition of reference systems and of their application to astronomy and geodesy has been passed into Resolutions of the scientific unions, following work of several working groups and of the community at large. In this community, the role of the International Earth Rotation and Reference systems Service (IERS) is to generate the terrestrial and celestial reference systems and the transformation between them, and the IERS Conventions provide the set of models and procedures used in the generation of IERS products. It is therefore essential that the IAU framework for relativity is introduced in the IERS Conventions, and that this is done consistently and completely throughout the document. The paper reviews relativistic aspects in the IERS Conventions and presents recent and on-going work aiming at providing a complete and consistent presentation for a new reference edition of the IERS Conventions, expected to appear in the next year.

The presence of convective motions in the atmospheres of metal-poor halo stars leads to systematic asymmetries of the emergent spectral line profiles. Since such line asymmetries are very small, they can be safely ignored for standard spectroscopic abundance analysis. However, when it comes to the determination of the 6Li/7Li isotopic ratio, q(Li)=n(6Li)/n(7Li), the intrinsic asymmetry of the 7Li line must be taken into account, because its signature is essentially indistinguishable from the presence of a weak 6Li blend in the red wing of the 7Li line. In this contribution we quantity the error of the inferred 6Li/7Li isotopic ratio that arises if the convective line asymmetry is ignored in the fitting of the λ6707 Å lithium blend. Our conclusion is that 6Li/7Li ratios derived by Asplund et al. (2006), using symmetric line profiles, must be reduced by typically Δq(Li) ≈ 0.015. This diminishes the number of certain 6Li detections from 9 to 4 stars or less, casting some doubt on the existence of a 6Li plateau.

NGC 3603 is one of the most massive, compact young star clusters in the Milky Way. The cluster has an age of only about 1 Myr and is embedded in a giant molecular cloud with ongoing star formation. We have analyzed deep imaging data obtained with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. We have obtained two epochs separated by 10 years, from which we derived proper motions which we used to determine cluster membership. After the removal of field stars, the resulting color–magnitude diagram shows a main sequence in addition to another clear sequence of pre-main-sequence stars. The cluster shows pronounced mass segregation and appears to have a very short crossing timescale. Our photometric, astrometric and kinematic data help us to evaluate the dissolution timescale of NGC 3603 and whether the mass segregation is likely to be primordial or evolutionary.

Icy grain mantles consist of small molecules containing hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen atoms (e.g. H2O, CO, CO2, NH3). Such ices, present in different astrophysical environments (giant planets satellites, comets, dense clouds, and protoplanetary disks), are subjected to irradiation of different energetic particles: UV radiation, ion bombardment (solar and stellar wind as well as galactic cosmic rays), and secondary electrons due to cosmic ray ionization of H2. The interaction of these particles with astrophysical ice analogs has been the object of research over the last decades. However, there is a lack of information on the effects induced by the heavy ion component of cosmic rays in the electronic energy loss regime. The aim of the present work is to simulate of the astrophysical environment where ice mantles are exposed to the heavy ion cosmic ray irradiation.

Sample ice films at 13K were irradiated by nickel ions with energies in the 1-10 MeV/u range and analyzed by means of FTIR spectrometry. Nickel ions were used because their energy deposition is similar to that deposited by iron ions, which are particularly abundant cosmic rays amongst the heaviest ones.

In this work the effects caused by nickel ions on condensed gases are studied (destruction and production of molecules as well as associated cross sections, sputtering yields) and compared with respective values for light ions and UV photons.

From the dawn of consciousness, humans have looked up and wondered about what the universe holds. It is that sense of wonder and thirst for knowledge that astronomy has helped fuel. In this paper we look at how education and public outreach has been a major element in preparing the next generation of astronomers and in sharing with the public the excitement of discoveries we make when we explore the Universe. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a clear set of goals and objectives related to education and public outreach. These goals follow directly from NASA's mission “to inspire the next generation of explorers”. Making progress towards achieving these goals has become an important part of the broad justification for public support of space science. Here we will describe a number of education and public outreach initiatives that are examples of the plethora of NASA funded programs and resources.

Recent studies of the Cosmic Microwave Background have provided us with a high quality image of the Universe when it was only 380,000 years old. At that time it was a near-uniform mixture of hydrogen, helium, dark matter and radiation, with no galaxies, no stars, no planets and no people, indeed no atomic nuclei heavier than Lithium. Under the action of gravity, the weak fluctuations observed in the microwave sky evolved into the extraordinarliy complex structure of our present Universe. I will show how supercomputer simulations can be used to demonstrate that such evolution does indeed reproduce the observed properties of today's galaxies and large-scale structures, thus confirming the extraordinary assumptions of the current structure formation paradigm. Only a quarter of the energy density of the present Universe is in gravitating matter; only a sixth of this matter is made of atoms or other known particles; only 5 percent of this baryonic material is currently inside galaxies. Most of today's Universe is in the form of Dark Energy; most of the gravitating matter is Dark Matter; and most of the baryons remain unseen in intergalactic space. The properties of the fluctuations measured in the microwave sky suggest that they originated very close to the Big Bang as quantum fluctuations of the vacuum itself. Everything has formed from nothing.

The total spectral irradiance of the Sun is seen to vary on many time scales. Three timescales are more prominent: (1) the longest one of about 11 years; (2) an intermediate timescale of the order of a few weeks; and (3) the shortest variation from hours to seconds. Every 11 years, the total solar irradiance periodically shows intervals of great activity and periods of almost no activity. The peak to peak variability, however, is less than 0.1%. This periodic variation of 11 years is called the solar cycle, which main tracer are sunspots. During times of maximum activity, there are many sunspots on the surface of the Sun, whereas during minimum there may be none. Sunspots are dark, and therefore cool, regions of enhanced magnetic fields of about a few hundred Gauss, that usually appear in groups on the solar photosphere. Basically, the solar cycle is regulated by the magnetic dynamo acting below the solar surface. Right now, the Sun is going through a time of minimum activity. The sunspot lifetime is of the order of one to two weeks, and are thus responsible for the intermediate variability timescale. The magnetic loops seen in ultraviolet and X-ray images have their footpoints anchored on sunspots. The most energetic phenomena of solar activity are flares and coronal mass ejections. Flares are large explosions that occur on the solar atmosphere and may last from a few seconds to hours. A solar flare is caused by a sudden, and yet unpredicted, energy release high above the magnetic loops. This magnetic energy is then used into particle acceleration and heating of the surrounding atmosphere. Both the energetic particles and the hot gas produce emission throughout the whole electromagnetic spectrum, from the very energetic gamma-rays all the way to long radio waves. From the observation of the emission produced during flares it is possible to infer the energetic particles spectra and thus have a clue on the acceleration mechanism that produced these particles. The recent findings of flare observations at gamma-rays by the RHESSI satellite and at high radio frequencies by the Solar Submillimeter Telescope are presented and discussed.

The physical behaviour of methane and carbon dioxide clathrate hydrates, specific crystallographic ice crystals are of major importance for the earth and may control the stability of gases in many astrophysical bodies such as the planets, comets and possibly interstellar grains. Such models claim they provide an alternative trapping mechanism modifying the absolute and relative composition of icy bodies and can be at the source of late time injection of gaseous species in planetary atmospheres. However, there is a clear need to detect them directly. We provide in this study the laboratory recorded signatures of clathrate hydrates in the near to mid-infrared for astrophysical remote detection. These laboratory experiments will in a near future allow to follow the kinetic formation by diffusion in dedicated experiments, another important step to implement, to understand and model their possible presence in space.

Relativistic effects play an important role in the performance of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and in world-wide time comparisons. The GPS has provided a model for algorithms that take relativistic effects into account. In the future exploration of space, analogous considerations will be necessary for the dissemination of time and for navigation. We discuss relativistic effects that are important for a navigation system such as at Mars. We describe relativistic principles and effects that are essential for navigation systems, and apply them to navigation satellites carrying atomic clocks in orbit about Mars, and time transfer between Mars and Earth. It is shown that, as in the GPS, relativistic effects are not negligible.

Globular clusters (GCs) are spheroidal concentrations typically containing of the order of 105 to 106, predominantly old, stars. Historically, they have been considered as the closest counterparts of the idealized concept of “simple stellar populations.” However, some recent observations suggest than, at least in some GCs, some stars are present that have been formed with material processed by a previous generation of stars. In this sense, it has also been suggested that such material might be enriched in helium, and that blue horizontal branch stars in some GCs should accordingly be the natural progeny of such helium-enhanced stars. In this contribution we show that, at least in the case of M3 (NGC 5272), the suggested level of helium enrichment is not supported by the available, high-precision observations.

In this proceeding I briefly discuss the possibility of relic decaying or annihilating particles to explain the cosmological 7Li anomaly and/or to be the source of significant amounts of pre-galactic 6Li. The effect of relic massive charged particles through catalysis of nuclear reactions is also discussed. The possibility of a connection of the 7Li problem to the cosmic dark matter and physics beyond the standard model of particle physics, such as supersymmetry, is noted.

We study the evolution of the MBH/Mhost relation up to z = 3 for a sample of 96 quasars with known host galaxy luminosities. Black hole masses are estimated assuming virial equilibrium in the broad-line regions, while the host galaxy masses are inferred from their luminosities. With this data, we are able to pin down the evolution of the MBH/Mhost relation over 85% of the age of the universe. While the MBH/Lhost relation remains nearly unchanged, taking into account the aging of the stellar population, we find that the MBH/Mhost ratio (Γ) increases by a factor ~ 7 from z = 0 to z = 3. We show that the evolution of Γ is independent of radio loudness and quasar luminosity. We propose that the most massive black holes, in their quasar phase at high-redshift, become extremely rare objects in host galaxies of similar mass in the local universe.

I review the progress made in understanding the physics and modes of star cluster formation through the use of direct self-gravitating hydrodynamical simulations, including those that have recently been performed incorporating radiative transfer and magnetic fields.

One of the key challenges for the next 10 years is to understand the first sources of light, the first stars and possibly accreting black holes. Their formation ended the cosmic dark ages at redshifts z ≃ 20 − 30, and signaled the transition from the simple initial state of the universe to one of ever increasing complexity. We here review recent progress in understanding the formation process of the first stars with numerical simulations, starting with cosmological initial conditions and modelling the detailed physics of accretion. Once formed, the first stars exerted crucial feedback on the primordial intergalactic medium, due to their input of radiation and of heavy chemical elements in the wake of supernova explosions. The current theoretical model posits that the first stars were predominantly very massive, typically ~100 M⊙. Our predictions will be tested with upcoming near-infrared observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telecope, in the decade ahead.