We present a monitoring campaign on high-luminosity quasars which will extend the existing reverberation mapping results by two orders of magnitude in luminosity, probing the broad-line region size and black hole mass of luminous AGN at redshift ~ 2 – 3.

ukidss gps is a deep and high-angular-resolution survey of the Galactic plane in the J, H, and K bands. Using this survey, we searched the inner region of the Galaxy (|l| < 10°) for young cluster candidates associated with molecular bubbles (MBs). The latter are observed in the mid-infrared survey glimpse ii. The underlying idea is that MBs may be blown out by powerful sources, such as young O and B stars; some of the MBs in the sample are indeed associated with Hii regions, a hint of the presence of young stars. One of the major observational problems in the Galactic plane is the high degree of interstellar absorption and its spatial variability. A significant effort is also devoted to quantifying this issue.

The Earth rotation rate and consequently universal time (UT1) and length of day (LOD) are periodically affected by solid Earth tides and oceanic tides. Solid Earth tides induce changes with periods from around 5 days to 18.6 years, with the largest amplitudes occurring at fortnightly, monthly, semi-annual and annual periods, and at 18.6 years. The principal variations caused by oceanic tides have diurnal and semi-diurnal periods. For the investigation of the tidal effects with periods of up to 35 days, UT1 series are estimated from VLBI observation data of the time interval 1984–2008. The amplitudes and phases of the terms of interest are calculated and the results for diurnal and sub-diurnal periods are compared and evaluated with tidal variations derived from a GNSS-based LOD time series of 8 months. The observed tidal signals are finally compared to the predicted tidal variations according to recent geophysical models.

Models of the universe, in the sense of solutions to the cosmological field equations, took their start in 1917 with Einstein's closed universe. During the next two decades they were developed to comprise evolving models, some of them cyclic and some of them with a definite age. The history of this development, as it occurred up to the mid 1930s, is reviewed. It is argued that in 1930-31, cosmology experienced a kind of paradigm shift.

Spectral synthesis is largely used in the literature to decompose stellar populations with integrated light of galaxies as if the star formation histories (SFH) could be approximated by single bursts. In the case of our method (see http://www.starlight.ufsc.br/ for the SEAGal - Semi Empirical Analysis of Galaxies - collaboration), the starlight code combines the spectra of simple stellar populations (SSP) of different ages and metallicities, computed with high spectral resolution evolutionary synthesis models of Bruzual & Charlot (2003), to reproduce the observed spectrum of a given galaxy from which we can derived a huge amount of galaxy properties such as: the population vector, stellar mass, extinction and others. We have done that for all galaxies of the SDSS database. Despite all the results of astrophysical interest, we have decided to use continuous composite stellar models (CSP) with a single metallicity and a star formation rate ∝ τ−1e−t/τ, where t stands for the time that the star formation started (1, 5 and 13 Gyr ago) and τ is the attenuation factor chosen to be 1, 5, 10 and 99 Gyr. When the attenuation with respect to the time t is very low, this mimics a single burst, and when we choose it to be very large (99 Gyr), this is almost a constant star formation rate. We have perturbed each composite model spectrum 10 times with three distinct signal/noise ratios equal to 10, 15 and 30 in λ0 = 4020 Å. These models were inserted into our code to verify how a picture of single bursts deal with continuous composite models of galaxies. Our CSP models can be easily integrated in an analytical form. Therefore, we have derived theoretically the mean ages and metallicities and compared them to the output derived by the synthesis. We can see that the synthesized mean ages weighted by light tend to be lower than the models, due to the degeneracies involved in the problem. The same thing can be found for the mean metallicities weighted by light, which tend to be higher for the output values.

We have obtained high-resolution spectra and carried out a detailed elemental abundance analysis for a new sample of 899 F and G dwarf stars in the Solar neighbourhood. The results allow us to, in a multi-dimensional space consisting of stellar ages, detailed elemental abundances, and full kinematic information for the stars, study and trace their respective origins. Here we briefly address selection criteria and discuss how to define a thick disc star. The results are discussed in the context of galaxy formation.

The 22-year oscillations of the Earth rotation due to several geophysical processes in the core-mantle system, oceans, atmosphere and geomagnetic field are excited mainly by 22-year cycles of the solar activity. These geophysical processes produce their own oscillations of the Earth rotation with different periods around 22 years. The direct and indirect influence of the solar activity on 22-year cycles of the Earth rotation are separated from the core effects and corresponding amplitudes are estimated by means of two approaches. The first, direct approach uses extended time series of Wolf's numbers with 22-year cycles, determined by sign alternation of even sunspot cycles. A linear regression between 22-year cycles of UT1 and solar activity is determined and this regression model is used to calculate the UT1 response to the 22-year cycles of the solar activity. The second, indirect approach uses 22-year oscillation of the mean sea level, caused by water evaporation due to variations of the total solar irradiance. The influence of the mean sea level variations on the Earth rotation is calculated by means of an empirical model of global water redistribution. The core-mantle effects on the 22-year UT1 variations are determined by excluding the UT1 response to the solar activity and core angular momentum due to the geomagnetic field variations, according to the solutions from the Special Bureau of the Core (SBC).

Low-mass stars exhibit, at all stages of their evolution, the signatures of complex physical processes that require challenging modelling beyond standard stellar theory. In this review, we focus on lithium depletion in low-mass stars. After disecting the Li dip, we discuss how large scale mixing due to rotation and internal gravity waves may interact to explain this feature. We also briefly discuss the impact that is expected on Population II stars.

A large fraction of otherwise normal galaxies shows weak nuclear activity. One of the signatures of the low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs) is the ultraviolet variability which was serendipitously discovered in the center of some low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER) galaxies (see Ho 2008 for a review).

We compare nuclear globular clusters (nGCs) in dwarf galaxies and Galactic GCs with extended (hot) horizontal branches (EHB–GCs) to test the suggested external origin of the latter and the conditions under which GC self-enrichment can operate. We show that the present-day escape velocity (vesc) of stellar ejecta to reach the cluster tidal radius compares with those of EHB–GCs. For EHB–GCs, we find a correlation between the present-day vesc and their metallicity as well as (V − I) colour. The similar vesc and (V − I) distribution of nGCs and EHB–GCs implies that nGCs could also have complex stellar populations. The vesc–[Fe/H] relation could reflect the known relation of increasing stellar-wind velocity with metallicity, which in turn explains why more metal-poor clusters typically show more peculiarities in their stellar population than more metal-rich clusters of the same mass.

Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) is the only space geodetic technique which is capable of estimating the Earth's phase of rotation, expressed as Universal Time UT1, over time scales of a few days or longer. Satellite-observing techniques like the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are suffering from the fact that Earth rotation is indistinguishable from a rotation of the satellite orbit nodes, which requires the imposition of special procedures to extract UT1 or length of day information. Whereas 24 hour VLBI network sessions are carried out at about three days per week, the hour-long one-baseline intensive sessions (‘Intensives’) are observed from Monday to Friday (INT1) on the baseline Wettzell (Germany) to Kokee Park (Hawaii, U.S.A.), and from Saturday to Sunday on the baseline Tsukuba (Japan) to Wettzell (INT2). Additionally, INT3 sessions are carried out on Mondays between Wettzell, Tsukuba, and Ny-Alesund (Norway), and ultra-rapid e-Intensives between E! urope and Japan also include the baseline Metsähovi (Finland) to Kashima (Japan). The Intensives have been set up to determine daily estimates of UT1 and to be used for UT1 predictions. Because of the short duration and the limited number of stations the observations can nowadays be e-transferred to the correlators, or to a node close to the correlator, and the estimates of UT1 are available shortly after the last observation thus allowing the results to be used for prediction purposes.

We discuss recent observations of stars located close to the symmetry plane of the Milky Way, and examine them in the context of theories of Galaxy formation and evolution. The kinematics, ages, and compositions of thin disk stars in the solar neighborhood display complex patterns, and interesting correlations. The Galactic disk does not seem to pose any unsurmountable obstacles to hierarchical galaxy formation theories, but a model of the Milky Way able to reproduce the complexity found in the data will likely require a meticulous study of a significant fraction of the stars in the Galaxy. Making such an observational effort seems necessary in order to make a physics laboratory out of our own galaxy, and ultimately ensure that the most relevant processes are properly understood.

I review basic observational features in Population I stars which strongly implicate rotation as a mixing agent; these include dispersion at fixed temperature in coeval populations and main sequence lithium depletion for a range of masses at a rate which decays with time. New developments related to the possible suppression of mixing at late ages, close binary mergers and their lithium signature, and an alternate origin for dispersion in young cool stars tied to radius anomalies observed in active young stars are discussed. I highlight uncertainties in models of Population II lithium depletion and dispersion related to the treatment of angular momentum loss. Finally, the origins of rotation are tied to conditions in the pre-main sequence, and there is thus some evidence that environment and planet formation could impact stellar rotational properties. This may be related to recent observational evidence for cluster to cluster variations in lithium depletion and a connection between the presence of planets and stellar lithium depletion.

We have launched a program of UBVR CCD photometric investigations of new clusters detected in the 2mass catalog based on an automatic detection method, which uses a convolution with a density function. Three new clusters, Koposov 12, Koposov 53 and Koposov 77 were observed in UBVI with the 104 cm Sampurnanand telescope located at ARIES, Manora Peak, India. Their ages, distances, color excesses and metallicities have been derived using photometric data.

The personality of Edward Milne is examined, deepening the historical period in which his Cosmological theory was produced. Is suggested that Milne's kinematical Cosmology can be regarded as a kind of ‘resistance’ to the scientific revolution deriving from the new Einstein's theory of gravitation. Is investigated the deep philosophical meaning of the metrics on curved manifolds as far as the representation of the universe is concerned, and the importance of the cosmological theories in the epistemology and in the evolution of science is stressed.

Secure measurements of the mass of the central supermassive black hole, MBH, in external galaxies are traditionally obtained through the modeling of the stellar and/or gaseous kinematics, most often derived using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations in the optical domain. The modeling of the nuclear ionized-gas kinematics has led to accurate MBH measurements at a relatively cheap cost in terms of observation time compared to stellar-dynamical MBH determinations. But only a handful of the objects have turned out to have sufficiently regular gas velocity fields for the purpose of modeling. Nevertheless, the HST archive contains a yet untapped resource that can be used to better constrain the MBH budget across the different morphological types of galaxies, which consists of the vast number of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) spectra from which a central emission-line width can be measured. These data allow to put an upper limit on MBH for a large number of galaxies and promise to compensate for the lack of exact measurements when studying the MBH–host galaxy relationships.

The goal of this work is to determine the properties of the stellar populations in a sample of LIRGs and ULIRGs. Using the ages as a clock we investigate: a) whether LIRGs-ULIRGs evolve into Radio Galaxies and QSOs; b) whether cool LIRGs-ULIRGs can evolve into warm LIRGs-ULIRGs; c) the merger sequence deduced from the morphological studies is reflected in the properties of the stellar populations. Using evolutionary synthesis models with high spectral resolution stellar libraries we have found that the intermediate age stellar population dominates at optical wavelengths. The stellar population in LIRGs is similar to ULIRGs and ULIRGs-QSOs transition objects.

The expansion speed of the Universe is increasing (Glanz 1998). This acceleration is attributed to dark energy which acts almost uniformly everywhere (including the Solar system) and thus essentially influences the Hubble constant. Its current value on a distance of 1 AU is H0 = 10 m/(yr AU). This is quite a large number and thus, the impact of dark energy should be detectable in the Solar system. We will illustrate it by several examples. Dark energy may partially be caused by gravitational aberration of the Sun, planets and other bodies.

Massive O- and B-type stars are “cosmic engines” in the Universe and can be the dominant source of luminosity in a galaxy. Be stars are rapidly rotating B-type stars that lose mass in an equatorial, circumstellar disk (Porter & Rivinius 2003) and cause Balmer and other line emission. Currently, we are unsure as to why these stars rotate so quickly but three scenarios are possible: they may have been born as rapid rotators, spun up by binary mass transfer, or spun up during the main-sequence evolution of B stars. In order to investigate these scenarios for this population of massive stars, we have been spectroscopically observing a set of 115 field Be stars with the Kitt Peak Coudè Feed telescope in both the Hα and Hγ wavelength regimes since 2004. This time baseline allows for examination of variability properties of the circumstellar disks as well as determine candidates for closer examination for binarity.

We find that 90% of the observed stars show some variability with only 4% showing significant variability over the 4-year baseline. Such values may be compared with the significant variability seen in some clusters such as NGC 3766 (McSwain 2008). Also, while 20% of the sample consists of known binaries, we find that another 15-30% of the sample shows indications of binarity.

This work has been supported in part by a grant from the Vanderbilt University Learning Sciences Institute, NASA grant # NNX08AV70G, and NSF Career grant AST-0349075.