The focus of this work is on two topics: (i) formation of complex organic molecules (COMs) and (ii) isotope fractionation. Various COMs, which are C, H-containing molecules consisting of 6 atoms and more, have been detected in the central warm region of protostellar cores. Most of this review is about gas-grain chemical models, which have been constructed to evaluate the mechanisms and efficiency of the COM formation. The relevant physical and chemical processes are investigated in laboratory experiments, as reported in other articles in this volume.

The isotope fractionation of volatile elements is observed in both the interstellar medium (ISM) and Solar system material. While exothermic exchange reactions enrich molecules with heavier isotopes such as Deuterium, the isotope selective photodissociation can be coupled with ice formation to enrich the ice mantle with rare isotopes. The efficiency of this fractionation depends on the photodesorption yields, which has been studied in laboratory experiments.

Current observations suggest an accelerated evolution of the cosmic star formation rate density for 8 < z < 10, indicating that galaxy assembly experienced an extremely intense phase during the first ∼600Myr years of cosmic time. We performed a systematic search of ultrabright star-forming galaxies at z ∼ 8 over the COSMOS/UltraVISTA survey, identifying 16 candidate Lyman-break galaxies. The still large uncertainties on the associated volume density do not yet allow us to ascertain whether a different star-formation efficiency (SFE) existed at early cosmic epochs. Leveraging the deepest Spitzer/IRAC data available from the GREATS program over the CANDELS/GOODS fields, we also constructed stacked SEDs of sub- L* LBGs at z ∼ 8. We find extreme nebular line emission (EW0 (Hα) ∼ 1000Å), high specific star-formation rates (∼10/Gyr) and indication of an inverse Balmer break. These results point toward very young ages (<100 Myr), and, combined with measurements at lower redshifts, that the SFE evolved only marginally during the first ∼1.5Gyr of cosmic history.

Debris disks are the natural by-products of the star and planet formation processes. Since the 1980’s several thousands of debris disks have been detected, and the presence of a disk is inferred by the detection of excess emission over the photospheric emission. This thermal emission arises from (micron-sized or slightly bigger) dust grains heated by the central star. However, in the vast majority of cases, these observations are not spatially resolving the radial distribution of the dust, resulting in strong degeneracies in the modeling approach (radial distance vs minimum grain size mostly). Therefore the properties of the small dust grains remained largely unconstrained until the arrival of high angular resolution instruments, especially at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. In these proceeding some of the main results are presented that have been obtained over the past few years on the properties of small dust grains in debris disks, and it is discussed how laboratory experiments contributed to put those results in context.

We highlight the challenges as well as lessons learnt in the derivation of the photometric redshifts for ∼4 million galaxies at 0 < z ≲ 6 contained in the Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (SERVS) and summarise the photometric redshift results recently published in Pforr et al. (2019). The inhomogeneous nature of the ancillary photometry for SERVS presents a similar situation to the one future, large, extragalactic surveys with e.g. LSST and JWST will face. We employ template SED-fitting to determine photometric redshifts. Our comparison of photometric redshifts to ∼75.000 public, spectroscopic redshifts results in an average σNMAD of ∼0.038 and outlier fraction of 3.7% for sources with the best photometric coverage. We find that photometric redshifts are determined most robustly when filter bands are numerous and cover a wide wavelength range. We highlight some possible improvements for the photometric redshifts in SERVS in the future.

By comparing two age indicators of high-mass white dwarfs (WDs) derived from Gaia data, two discoveries have been made recently: one is the existence of a cooling anomaly that produces the Q branch structure on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, and the other is the existence of high-mass WDs as double-WD merger products. The former poses a challenge for WD cooling models, and the latter has implications on binary evolution and type-Ia supernovae.

On the occasion of celebration of moon landing (2019) we designed a set of educational activities for the youngest, based on the moon. We wanted to talk, play and engage young people reflecting and enjoying different points of view and demystifying the idea of science and scientists in a personal and meaningful journey. After this year of experimentation we also engaged with public schools co-designing and tailoring those activities despite the current sanitarian crisis. We will describe a physical artifact called ‘Lunatario’ and its 3d printable version together with cross-disciplinary educational activities and our tentative documentation. We will also describe how, with the help of a very diverse team, we embedded other media in our moon exploration working in particular with picture books and animation. We believe this is a great way to deeply engage young people with STEAM in a democratic way.

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) exhibit multi-wavelength properties that are representative of the underlying physical processes taking place in the vicinity of the accreting supermassive black hole. The black hole mass and the accretion rate are fundamental for understanding the growth of black holes, their evolution, and the impact on the host galaxies. Recent results on reverberation-mapped AGNs show that the highest accretion rate objects have systematic shorter time-lags. These super-Eddington accreting massive black holes (SEAMBHs) show BLR size 3-8 times smaller than predicted by the Radius-Luminosity (R-L) relationship. Hence, the single-epoch virial black hole mass estimates of highly accreting AGNs have an overestimation of a factor of 3-8 times. SEAMBHs likely have a slim accretion disk rather than a thin disk that is diagnostic in X-ray. I will present the extreme X-ray properties of a sample of dozen of SEAMBHs. They indeed have a steep hard X-ray photon index, Γ, and demonstrate a steeper power-law slope, ασx.

In Karydis et al. (2021) we have introduced the method of shape continuation in order to obtain periodic orbits in the complex gravitational field of an irregularly-shaped asteroid starting from a symmetric simple model. What’s more, we map the families of periodic orbits of the simple model to families of the real asteroid model. The introduction of asymmetries in a gravitational potential may significantly affect the dynamical properties of the families. In this paper, we discuss the effect of the asymmetries in the neighborhood of vertically critical orbits, where, in the symmetric model, bifurcations of 3D periodic orbit families occur. When asymmetries are introduced, we demonstrate that two possible continuation schemes can take place in general. Numerical simulations, using an ellipsoid and a mascon model of 433-Eros, verify the existence of these schemes.

Dense environments have an impact on the star formation rate of galaxies. As stars form from molecular gas, looking at the cold molecular gas content of a galaxy gives useful insights on its efficiency in forming stars. However, most galaxies observed in CO (a proxy for the cold molecular gas content) at intermediate redshifts, are field galaxies. Only a handful of studies focused on cluster galaxies. I present new results on the environment of one medium mass cluster from the EDisCS survey at z ˜ 0.5. 27 star-forming galaxies were selected to evenly sample the range of densities encountered inside and around the cluster. We cover a region extending as far as 8 virial radii from the cluster center. Indeed there is ample evidence that star formation quenching starts already beyond 3 cluster virial radii. I discuss our CO(3-2) ALMA observations, which unveil a large fraction of galaxies with low gas-to-stellar mass ratios.

Though generated deep inside the convection zone, the solar magnetic field has a direct impact on the Earth space environment via the Parker spiral. It strongly modulates the solar wind in the whole heliosphere, especially its latitudinal and longitudinal speed distribution over the years. However the wind also influences the topology of the coronal magnetic field by opening the magnetic field lines in the coronal holes, which can affect the inner magnetic field of the star by altering the dynamo boundary conditions. This coupling is especially difficult to model because it covers a large variety of spatio-temporal scales. Quasi-static studies have begun to help us unveil how the dynamo-generated magnetic field shapes the wind, but the full interplay between the solar dynamo and the solar wind still eludes our understanding.

We use the compressible magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) code PLUTO to compute simultaneously in 2.5D the generation and evolution of magnetic field inside the star via an α-Ω dynamo process and the corresponding evolution of a polytropic coronal wind over several activity cycles for a young Sun. A multi-layered boundary condition at the surface of the star connects the inner and outer stellar layers, allowing both to adapt dynamically. Our continuously coupled dynamo-wind model allows us to characterize how the solar wind conditions change as a function of the cycle phase, and also to quantify the evolution of integrated quantities such as the Alfvén radius. We further assess the impact of the solar wind on the dynamo itself by comparing our results with and without wind feedback.

Tidal evolution of low-eccentric circumbinary planets is expected to drive the rotational evolution toward a pseudo-synchronous solution. In this work, we present a study of the oscillation amplitudes around this state by considering that the two central stars exert creep tides on the planet. These amplitudes are computed by direct numerical integrations of the creep equations and also by means of the calculation of the coefficients of the periodic terms in this stationary solution. As in the two-body-problem, the planetary spin and lag-angle are observed to have maximum oscillation amplitudes for stiff bodies and almost null oscillation for the gaseous regime, while the opposite behaviour is observed in the equatorial and polar flattenings. Our analytical approximation shows to be very accurate and specially necessary for very-low eccentric planets. However, the magnitudes of the oscillation amplitudes around the pseudo-synchronous solution in the circumbinary problem appears to be very small respect to the mean value. Thus, considering these oscillation in the computation of the tidal energy dissipation may not have a substantial contribution in the results, at least compared to the case in which only the mean values are taken into account.

We have investigated the role of AGN feedback on galaxy downsizing in cluster and void environments, using the sample from Amieri et al. (2019). Our results indicate that, at least in the local universe, the correlation between black hole mass and (specific) star formation rate is statistically indistinguishable in the two environments. Therefore, the role of the environment in modulating AGN feedback effects on the host galaxy star formation is negligible.

White dwarfs (WDs) in open star clusters are a highly useful ensemble of stars. While numerous researchers use open cluster WDs to study the initial-final mass relation, numerous other evolutionary studies are also enabled by this sample of stars, including searches for stochastic mass loss, studies of binary star evolution, and measurements of metallicity impacts on WD formation and evolution. However, it is crucial to use astrometric data such as proper motions to remove contaminating field WDs from open cluster samples; multi-epoch ground based imaging is needed for most open cluster WDs. Also, the strongly correlated errors in the initial mass - final mass plane must be considered; we illustrate the importance of this consideration using a large open cluster WD sample and Monte Carlo techniques.

The language we speak, the culture in which we grew up and where we come from have a tremendous impact on the way we learn astronomy. Additionally, the historical predominance of Western culture has influenced the way our modern society sees the world, and of course, the sky. In this work, we will share author’s experience working as science advisor in an outreach institution, where he explored different strategies to reach diverse communities and bring astronomy closer to broader audiences.

Even though the construction of world-renowned astronomical observatories in Chile has boosted the interest in astronomy on the community, many challenges have not yet been addressed. One of them is to raise awareness about the ancestral heritage of Chilean’s first nations. Finally, we would like to highlight the importance of learning astronomy in our own language and therefore assure inclusion, diversity, and equity in our countries.

The variation of optical continuum and broad emission lines is observed in all type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN). In some cases even extreme variability is detected when broad-line profiles completely disappear as is the case in the co-called changing-look AGN, which raise new question on the theoretical model of AGN. This variability is an important tool to study the physics and geometry of the broad line region (BLR), e.g. it can be used to estimate its size through the reverberation mapping technique. Especially, long-term campaigns give new insights, like the detection of the periodic signals or discoveries of changing-look AGN. Here we will present the results of our long-term monitoring campaign of several well-known AGN, as e.g. NGC 3516 for which we confirm that it is the changing-look AGN, putting special attention of the applications for future large time-domain spectroscopic surveys, like the MaunaKea Spectroscopic Explorer project.

It is well known that X-ray luminosity (Lx) originating from high mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) is tightly correlated with the host galaxy’s star formation rate (SFR). We explore this connection using a sample representative of the star-formation activity in the local Universe (Star-Formation Reference Survey; SFRS) along with a comprehensive set of star-formation (radio, FIR, 24μm, 8 μm, Hα, UV, SED fitting) and stellar mass (K-band, 3.6 μm, SED fitting) indicators, and Chandra observations. We investigate the Lx–SFR and Lx– stellar mass (M*) scaling relations down to sub-galactic scales of ∼lkpc2. This way we extend these relations to extremely low SFR (∼10−6M⊙.yr−1) and M* (∼104M⊙). We also quantify their scatter and their dependence on the age of the local stellar populations as inferred from the different age sensitive SFR indicators. These results are particularly important for setting the benchmark for the formation of X-ray binaries in vigorous, but low SFR objects such as galaxies in the early Universe.

Geomagnetic storms can be modeled as stochastic processes with log-normal probability distribution function over their minimum Dst index value measured during the main phase of each event. Considering a time series of geomagnetic storm events between 1957 and 2019 we have analyzed the probability of occurrence of small, moderate, strong and extreme events. The data were separated according to solar cycle (SC) and solar cycle phases and fitted through maximum likelihood method in order to compare rates of occurrence of the last Solar Cycle (SC24) with previous ones. Our results show that for Dst < – 100 nT events in SC24 are similar to those in SC20, obtaining ⁓42 vs 21 median rate storms per cycle with 95% confidence intervals using Bootstrap Method. As SC24 has been the least active solar cycle in over 200 years, we conclude that this method tends to overestimate geomagnetic storms occurrence rates even for small events.

Isopropyl-cyanide (iso-PrCN) was recently observed in Sagittarius B2 with an abundance higher than its straight-chain structure isomer (n-PrCN). Here we study theoretically by means of [UMP2(full)/aug-cc-pVTZ/Amber] a hybrid ab initio/molecular mechanics methodology, the routes leading to its formation on a formaldehyde doped water ice grain model of the interstellar medium. The reaction path and the energetics are calculated, the mechanism is found to be exothermic by ∼ 30 kcal/mol and the barrier is ∼ 70 kcal/mol. We use the CVT/ZCT semiclassical method to predict the kinetics of the reaction path starting from initially adsorbed HCN and CH2CHCH3 molecules colliding from the gas phase over the temperature range [100–500K].

Spectral analysis is nowadays a widely used tool to investigate the evolution of galaxies. Assessing the reliability of this approach is crucia, motivating a through analysis. In this poster, a comparative study between two widely tools, FADO and STECKMAP, is performed, focusing on the discrepancies between the different approaches. Both codes use different methods to extract the best fit, allowing the possibility to disentangle possible biases introduced in the analysis. Our analysis showed that where nebular emission is not negligible, the results obtained with methods taking into account such a component are more reliable, and this can be very important when moving at higher redshift, where stellar populations are younger. In particular, this is true for starburst systems, where a huge amount of stars are forming almost at the same epoch. This is an important aspect to take into account the future survey, as JWST for example, which will provide the community with medium resolution spectra of galaxies at redshift 3-4 and even higher.

Understanding the physical structure of the planet formation environment, the protoplanetary disk, is essential for the interpretation of high resolution observations of the dust and future observations of the magnetic field structure. Observations of multiple transitions of molecular species offers a unique view of the underlying physical structure through excitation analyses. Here we describe a new method to extract high-resolution spectra from low-resolution observations, then provide two case studies of how molecular excitation analyses were used to constrain the physical structure in TW Hya, the closest protoplanetary disk to Earth.