Celestial events often exerted a great or even decisive influence on the life of ancient communities. They may provide some of the foundations on which an understanding of the deeper meaning of mythologies, religious systems and even folk tales can be based. These influences are reflected and may be detected in the archaeological material as well. There is good evidence that celestial (especially solar and perhaps lunar) phenomena played a particularly important rôle in the worldview of prehistoric Europe. To reveal the social and ideational significance of concepts relating to the celestial bodies in the prehistory of the Carpathian Basin, complex investigations on orientations of houses and graves, prestige archaeological finds and iconography have been accomplished. The results indicate ideological and/or social changes, which developed into a likely organized ideological system in large part of Central Europe including the Carpathian Basin by the Late Bronze Age. It might also be the first period in prehistory when people became really interested in celestial phenomena.

The structure and kinematics of the recognized stellar components of the Milky Way are explored, based on well-determined atmospheric parameters and kinematic quantities for 32360 “calibration stars” from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and its first extension, (SDSS-II), which included the sub-survey SEGUE: Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration. Full space motions for a sub-sample of 16920 stars, exploring a local volume within 4 kpc of the Sun, are used to derive velocity ellipsoids for the inner- and outer-halo components of the Galaxy, as well as for the canonical thick-disk and proposed metal-weak thick-disk populations. This new sample of calibration stars represents an increase of 60% relative to the numbers used in a previous analysis. A Maximum Likelihood analysis of a local sub-sample of 16920 calibration stars has been developed in order to extract kinematic information for the major Galactic components (thick disk, inner halo, and outer halo), as well as for the elusive metal-weak thick disk (MWTD). We measure velocity ellipsoids for the thick disk, the MWTD, the inner halo, and the outer halo, demonstrate that the MWTD may be a component that is kinematically and chemically independent of the canonical thick disk (and put limits on the metallicity range of the MWTD), and derive the inferred spatial density profiles of the inner/outer halo components. We also present evidence for tilts in the velocity ellipsoids for stars in our sample as a function of height above the plane, for several ranges in metallicity, and confirm the shift of the observed metallicity distribution function (MDF) from the inner-halo to the outer-halo dominated sample.

We derive improved versions of the relations between supermassive black hole mass MBH and host-galaxy bulge velocity dispersion σ and luminosity L (the MBH–σ and MBH–Lbulge relations), based on ~ 50 MBH measurements and ~ 20 upper limits. Particular attention is paid to recovery of the intrinsic scatter (ϵ0) in both relations. We find the scatter to be significantly larger than estimated in most previous studies. The large scatter requires revision of the local black hole mass function, and it implies that there may be substantial selection bias in studies of the evolution of the MBH–σ and MBH–Lbulge relations. When only considering ellipticals, the scatter decreases. These results appear to be insensitive to a wide range of assumptions about the measurement errors and the distribution of intrinsic scatter. We also investigate the effects on the fits of culling the sample according to the resolution of the black hole's sphere of influence.

Improved accuracy in measurement of the gravitational time delay of electromagnetic waves passing by the sun may be achieved with two drag-free spacecraft, one with a stable clock and laser transmitter and one with a high-stability transponder. We consider one spacecraft near the Earth-Sun L1 point with an advanced optical clock, and the transponder on a second satellite, which has a 2 year period orbit and eccentricity e = 0.37. Superior conjunctions will occur at aphelion 1, 3, and 5 years after launch of the second spacecraft. The measurements can be made using carrier phase comparisons on the laser beam that would be sent to the distant spacecraft and then transponded back. Recent development of clocks based on optical transitions in cooled and trapped ions or atoms indicate that a noise spectral amplitude of about 5 × 10−15/ at frequencies down to at least 1 microhertz can be achieved in space-borne clocks. An attractive candidate is a clock based on a single laser-cooled Yb+ trapped ion. Both spacecraft can be drag-free at a level of 1×10−13m/s2/ at frequencies down to at least 1 microhertz. The corresponding requirement for the LISA gravitational wave mission is 3 × 10−15m/s2/ at frequencies down to 10−4 Hz, and Gravitational Reference Sensors have been developed to meet this goal. They will be tested in the LISA Pathfinder mission, planned by ESA for flight in 2011. The requirements to extend the performance to longer times are mainly thermal. The achievable accuracy for determining the PPN parameter γ is about 1 × 10−8.

Analysis of integrated spectra of star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds can bring important information for studies on the chemical evolution of the Clouds. The aim of the present work is to derive ages and metallicities from integrated spectra of 15 star clusters in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), some of them not studied so far. Making use of a full spectrum fitting technique, we compared the integrated spectra of the sample clusters to three different sets of single stellar population models available in the literature. We derived ages and metallicities for the sample clusters employing the codes STARLIGHT and ULySS. Out of the 15 clusters in our sample, 9 are old/intermediate age clusters and 6 are young clusters. We point out the results for the newly identified as old/intermediate age clusters HW1, NGC 152, Lindsay 3 and 11. We also confirm old ages for NGC 361, NGC 419 and Kron 3, and the oldest well-known SMC cluster NGC 121.

It was shown that the ICRF radio sources including the defining sources have significant apparent motion that leads to rotation of the ICRF. This rotation is transformed to secular variations of EOP that is decreased or removed if motion of sources is took into account.

The French space mission MICROSCOPE aims at testing the weak Equivalence Principle (EP) with an accuracy of 10−15. The payload, which is developed and built by the French institute ONERA consists of two high-precision capacitive differential accelerometers. The detection of the test mass movement and their control is done via a complex electrode system. The German department ZARM is member of the MICROSCOPE performance team. In addition to drop tower tests, mission simulations and the preparation of the mission data evaluation are realized in close cooperation with the French partners CNES, ONERA and OCA. Therefore a comprehensive simulation of the real system including the science signal and all error sources is built for the development and testing of data reduction and data analysis algorithms to extract the EP violation signal. In this context the focus lays on the correct modeling of the environmental disturbances. Currently new effort to study the influence of the solar radiation and the Earth albedo to the MICROSCOPE mission scenario is underway.

We present K-band adaptive-optics assisted spectroscopic observations of the central region of the archetype head-tail radio galaxy NGC 1265 (3C 83.1), with the aim of constraining the mass of the supermassive black hole (MBH). The near-infrared data taken with the Altair–NIRI system on the Gemini North have a spatial resolution of FWHM = 0.”11 (39 pc, at the galaxy's distance of 73 Mpc).

The giant Hii region NGC 604 constitutes a complex and rich population to study in detail many aspects of massive star formation, such as their environments and physical conditions, the evolutionary processes involved, the initial mass function for massive stars and star-formation rates, among many others. Here, we present our first results of a near-infrared study of NGC 604 performed with NIRI images obtained with Gemini North. Based on deep JHK photometry, 164 sources showing infrared excess were detected, pointing to the places where we should look for star-formation processes currently taking place. In addition, the color–color diagram reveals a great number of objects that could be giant/supergiant stars or unresolved, small, tight clusters. An extinction map obtained based on narrow-band images is also shown.

The influence of post-Newtonian effects in the rotation of Earth on UT1 are investigated and found to be negligible.

Stellar activity has a particularly strong influence on planets at small orbital distances, such as close-in exoplanets. For such planets, we present two extreme cases of stellar variability, namely stellar coronal mass ejections and stellar wind, which both result in the planetary environment being variable on a timescale of billions of years. For both cases, direct interaction of the streaming plasma with the planetary atmosphere would entail servere consequences. In certain cases, however, the planetary atmosphere can be effectively shielded by a strong planetary magnetic field. The efficiency of this shielding is determined by the planetary magnetic dipole moment, which is difficult to constrain by either models or observations. We present different factors which influence the strength of the planetary magnetic dipole moment. Implications are discussed, including nonthermal atmospheric loss, atmospheric biomarkers, and planetary habitability.

We recently presented (Sbordone et al., 2009a) the largest sample to date of lithium abundances in extremely metal-poor (EMP) Halo dwarf and Turn-Off (TO) stars. One of the most crucial aspects in estimating Li abundances is the Teff determination, since the Li I 670.8 nm doublet is highly temperature sensitive. In this short contribution we concentrate on the Teff determination based on Hα wings fitting, and on its sensitivity to the chosen stellar gravity.

At high-z the most superdense massive galaxies are supposed to be the result of gas-rich mergers resulting in compact remnant (Khochfar & Silk (2006); Naab et al. (2007)). After this, dry mergers are expected to be the mechanism that moves these very massive galaxies towards the current stellar mass size relation. Whitin these merging scenarios, a non-negligible fraction (1-10%) of these galaxies is expected to survive since that epoch retaining their compactness and presenting old stellar populations in the past universe.Using the NYU Value-Added Galaxy Catalog (DR6), we find only a tiny fraction of galaxies (~0.03%) with re ≤ 1.5 kpc and M* ≥ 8x1010M⊙ in the local Universe (z~0.2). Surprisingly, they are relatively young (~2Gyr) and metal rich ([Z/H]~0.2) These results have been published in Trujillo et al. (2009)

In this review the oldest known advanced astronomical instrument and dedicated analogue computer is presented, in context. The Antikythera Mechanism a mysterious device, assumed to be ahead of its time, probably made around 150 to 100 BCE, has been found in a 1st century BCE shipwreck near the island of Antikythera in a huge ship full of Greek treasures that were on their way to Rome. The Antikythera Mechanism is a clock-like device made of bronze gears, which looks much more advanced than its contemporary technological achievements. It is based on mathematics attributed to the Hipparchus and possibly carries knowledge and tradition that goes back to Archimedes, who according to ancient texts constructed several automata, including astronomical devices, a mechanical planetarium and a celestial sphere. The Antikythera Mechanism probably had a beautiful and expensive box; looking possibly like a very elaborate miniature Greek Temple, perhaps decorated with golden ornaments, of an elegant Hellenistic style, even perhaps with automatic statuettes, ‘daemons’, functioning as pointers that performed some of its operations. Made out of appropriately tailored trains of gears that enable to perform specialised calculations, the mechanism carries concentric scales and pointers, in one side showing the position of the Sun in the ecliptic and the sky, possibly giving the time, hour of the day or night, like a clock. The position of the Moon and its phase is also shown during the month. On the other side of the Mechanism, having probably the size of a box (main part 32×20×6 cm), are two large spiral scales with two pointers showing the time in two different very long calendars, the first one concerning the eclipses, and lasting 18 years 11 days and 8 hours, the Saros period, repeating the solar and lunar eclipses, and enabling their prediction, and the 19 year cycle of Meton, that is the period the Moon reappears in the same place of the sky, with the same phase. An additional four-year dial shows the year of all Greek Festivities, the so-called ‘games’ (Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian etc). Two additional dials give the Exeligmos, the 54 year and 34 day cycle, which provides a more accurate prediction of eclipses. It is possible that the Mechanism was also equipped with a planetary show display, as three of the planets and their motion (stationary points) are mentioned many times in the manual of the instrument, so it was also a planetarium. From the manual we have hints that the mechanism was probably also an observational instrument, as having instructions concerning a viewfinder and possibly how to orient the viewfinder to pass a sunbeam through it, probably measuring the altitude of the Sun. There are fragmented sentences that probably give instructions on how to move the pointers to set the position of the Sun, the Moon and the planets in their initial places in the ecliptic, on a specific day, or how to measure angular distances between two celestial bodies or their coordinates. This mechanism is definitely not the first one of its kind. The fact that it is accompanied with instructions means that the constructor had in its mind to be used by somebody else and one posits that he made at least another similar instrument.

The Galactic bulge is the central spheroid of our Galaxy, containing about one quarter of the total stellar mass of the Milky Way (Mbulge = 1.8 × 1010M⊙; Sofue, Honma & Omodaka 2009). Being older than the disk, it is the first massive component of the Galaxy to have collapsed into stars. Understanding its structure, and the properties of its stellar population, is therefore of great relevance for galaxy formation models. I will review our current knowledge of the bulge properties, with special emphasis on chemical abundances, recently measured for several hundred stars.

We observed two fields near M32 with the ACS/HRC (Program GO-10572, PI: T. Lauer) on board the Hubble Space Telescope, located at distances of about 1.8' and 5.4' (hereafter F1 and F2, respectively) from the center of M32. To obtain a very detailed and deep color-magnitude diagram (CMD) and to look for short period variability, we obtained time-series imaging of each field in 32-orbit-long exposures using the F435W (B) and F555W (V) filters, spanning a temporal range of 2 days per filter. We focus on our detection of variability on RR Lyrae variable stars, which represents the only way to obtain information about the presence of a very old population (larger than 10 Gyr) in M32 from optical data. Here we present results obtained from the detection of 31 RR Lyrae in these fields: 17 in F1 and 14 in F2. We claim we detected 7+4−3 RR Lyrae variables belonging to M32 in F1 thus indicating the presence of a metal-poor ancient population in M32.

Young stars undergoing the conversion of pre-main-sequence circumstellar disks into protoplanetary systems are strong sources of high energy (FUV/EUV/X-ray) radiation that controls the physical and chemical processes in their circumstellar environment out to hundreds of AU from the star. The high energy radiation resulting from magnetic activity and accretion onto the central star controls the thermal structure of disks, the formation process of planetesimals, and the photoexcitation and photoionization of protoplanets and young planetary atmospheres. Modeling of the dust and gas evolution requires an accurate understanding of the local radiation field throughout the ultraviolet (UV) and X-ray spectral regions, even those parts of the spectrum that are impossible to observe from Earth.

Our current research efforts are directed towards developing a better understanding of UV (using HST and FUSE) and X-ray (using Chandra, XMM-Newton, and Swift) stellar activity and the resulting radiation fields during pre-main-sequence evolution from ages of a few to several hundred million years. These studies include extensive UV and X-ray spectral sampling of individual stars in nearby star formation regions and the various moving groups of the Local Association, including our HST Cycle 17 Large Project (GO-11616), which is using 111 HST orbits to observe 32 T Tauri stars with the COS UV spectrograph. Most young stars are well over 100 pc from the Sun and are consequently hard to observe in the UV and X-ray regions at even moderate spectral resolution. However, members of the Local Association, whose ages range from 7 Myr to a few hundred Myr, surround the Sun at distances of 50 pc or less and permit the detailed study of the later stages of the early evolution of stellar activity when gas giant and terrestrial protoplanets are forming. We illustrate our methodology using the 12 Myr old early-M dwarf AU Mic, which possesses a striking dust debris disk, as an example.

We present a new solution of Earth Orientation Parameters, based on optical astrometry and catalog EOC-4.

The simultaneous investigation of Li and Be in stars is a powerful tool in the study of the evolutionary mixing processes. Here, we present beryllium abundances in stars along the whole evolutionary sequence of the open cluster IC 4651. This cluster has a metallicity of [Fe/H] = +0.11 and an age of 1.2 or 1.7 Gyr. Abundances have been determined from high-resolution, high signal-to-noise UVES spectra using spectrum synthesis and model atmospheres. Lithium abundances for the same stars were determined in a previous work. Confirming previous results, we find that the Li dip is also a Be dip. For post-main-sequence stars, the Be dilution starts earlier within the Hertzsprung gap than expected from classical predictions, as does the Li dilution. Theoretical hydrodynamical models are able to reproduce well all the observed features.

MICROSCOPE is a ESA/CNES space mission for testing the validity of the weak equivalence principle. The mission's goal is to determine the Eötvös parameter η with an accuracy of 10−15. The French space agency CNES is responsible for designing the satellite which is developed and produced within the Myriade series. The satellite's payload T–SAGE (Twin Space Accelerometer for Gravitation Experimentation) consists of two high–precision capacitive differential accelerometers and is developed and built by the French institute ONERA.

As a member of the MICROSCOPE performance team, the German department ZARM performs free fall tests of the MICROSCOPE differential accelerometers at the Bremen drop tower. The project's concepts and current results of the free fall tests are shortly presented.