Shortcomings in current science outreach contribute to a disconnection between science and society; prompting new requirements in thinking about what science outreach is and how it is planned and implemented. It is proposed here that central to successful outreach should be focus on identifying and communicating value in, and the relevance of, science; rather than necessarily attempting to inspire interest in, or understanding of science. This, coupled to world coordinated identification of key science outreach directives, messages and plans point to more effective science outreach relevant to the global community.

Much of what we know about the chemical composition of the Universe actually stems from the chemical composition of stars, which is often deciphered from the spectra emerging from their atmospheres. Cool, low-mass and long-living stars allow to study the evolution of the Universe's chemistry from a time shortly after the big bang until today. The observation and interpretation of stellar spectra is a classical field in astronomy but is still undergoing vivid developments. The enormous increase in available computational resources opened-up possibilities which led to a revolution in the degree of realism to which modelers can mimic Nature. High-resolution, high-stability, high-efficiency spectrographs are now routinely providing stellar spectra whose full information content can only be exploited if a very much refined description of a stellar atmosphere is at hand.

Over the past 15 years, our knowledge of the interior of the Sun has tremendously progressed by the use of helioseismic measurements. However, to go further in our understanding of the solar core, we need to measure gravity (g) modes. Thanks to the high quality of the Doppler-velocity signal measured by GOLF/SoHO, it has been possible to unveil the signature of the asymptotic properties of the solar g modes, thus obtaining a hint of the rotation rate in the core (García et al. 2007, 2008a). However, the quest for the detection of individual g modes is not yet over. In this work, we apply the latest theoretical developments to guide our research using GOLF velocity time series. In contrary to what was thought till now, we are maybe starting to identify individual low-frequency g modes. . .

The interest to astronomy has incredibly risen in the younger generation of Iranians during the last two decades. By the end of the devastating war with Iraq, science popularisation activities started again in Iran and with only a handful of astronomers and few dozens of serious amateur astronomers in the whole country in late 1980s now there are thousands of amateur astronomers (60% female on average) and over 100 professional astronomers propelling the fun and science of astronomy in the society.

Using an AGN sample from the INTEGRAL all-sky survey, we show that the density fluctuations of matter in the local universe translate linearly into the density fluctuations of accreting supermassive black holes. Our results imply that hard X-ray emitting AGNs are unbiased tracers of the galaxy population in the nearby universe and SMBH activity is independent of the density of galaxies.

We present MHD numerical simulations of a rotating turbulent convection system in a 3D domain (we have used the finite volume, Goudunov type MHD code PLUTO (Mignone et al. 2007)). Rotating convection is the natural scenario for the study of the dynamo action which is able to generate a large scale magnetic field, like the observed in the sun. Though we have neglected in the present approach the Ω effect, due to a large scale shear, our model is appropriate to test the controversial existence of the so called α effect that arises from helical turbulence (e.g. Cattaneo & Hughes 2006, Käpylä et al. 2009). We start with a two-layer piece-wise polytropic region in hydrostatic equilibrium (e.g. Ziegler 2002), considering one stable overshoot layer at the bottom and a convectively unstable layer at the top of the computational domain. We have allowed this hydrodynamic system to evolve up to the steady state, i.e., after about 10 turnover times (τ). Then, we introduced a seed magnetic field and let the system evolve for more ~40 τ. Our preliminary results are summarized below in Figure 2.

Far ultraviolet (FUV) emission is observed in the central regions of cool-core clusters with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). It is traced out to 20 kpc from the nuclei of the brightest cluster galaxies and found to be distributed in clumps and filaments, as shown in Figure 1. The FUV emission matches the global structure of the ionized gas nebulae. If produced by stars, this emission can account for the ionization but not the temperature of the gas (Voit & Donahue 1997; Oonk et al. in preparation).

A campaign of the Star Week, set as August 1 – 7, has been started in 1995 throughout various life-learning facilities. Astronomical facilities including planetariums, science museums, and public observatories has been participating in this campaign, together with amateur astronomers clubs or private observatories. More than 300 astronomical events such as star watching parties were coordinated for general public every year. The Star Week has been grown up to one of the most successful campaigns not only for for astronomy but also for basic sciences in Japan over this 15 years. In this paper, a brief history and the present status of the Star Week are introduced together with the with some statistics.

It is known that physical properties of solar turbulent convection and oscillations strongly depend on magnetic field. In particular, recent observations from SOHO/MDI revealed significant changes of the wave properties in inclined magnetic field regions of sunspots, which affect helioseismic inferences. We use realistic 3D radiative MHD numerical simulations to investigate solar convection and oscillations and their relationship in the presence of inclined magnetic field. In the case of highly inclined and strong 1-1.5 kG field the solar convection develops filamentary structure and high-speed flows (Fig. 1a), which provide an explanation to the Evershed effect in sunspot penumbra (Kitiashvili, et al. 2009).

Working within a large geographic area, McDonald Observatory lacks the resources to send staff to present professional development workshops to teachers – and only limited numbers of teachers have the resources to attend workshops at our observatory. Our solution is the development of a new program to bring the workshop to teachers in their own communities through videoconferencing. Each workshop location has a co-facilitator who prepared for his/her duties through an orientation/training session held at McDonald Observatory. At the observatory, they experienced a variety of activities and selected the ones most suitable for the grade-levels of the teachers in their region; they recruit the teachers for the local workshop. Each videoconference session includes pre/post assessment of the participants, an interactive videoconference with an expert presenter, and assistance from the co-facilitator who manages the materials and assists with the activities. Through use of this technology, we expect to reach 500 teachers. An independent evaluator is preparing formative and summative evaluation for the project.

We present a new catalog of isolated galaxies (coined as UNAM–KIAS) obtained through an automated systematic search. The 1520 isolated galaxies were found in ~ 1.4 steradians of the sky in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 (SDSS DR5) photometry. The selection algorithm was implemented from a variation of the criteria developed by Karachentseva (1973), with full redshift information. This new catalog is aimed to carry out comparative studies of environmental effects and constraining the currently competing scenarios of galaxy formation and evolution.

Recent studies have shown that not only primary school students but also their future teachers reach science courses with pre-constructed and consistent models of the world surrounding them. These ideas include many misconceptions which turn out to be robust and hence make difficult an appropriate teaching-learning process. We have designed some tools (and show here results with a questionnaire) that proved helpful in putting in evidence some of the most frequently used alternative models on a few basic astronomical notions. We have tested this questionnaire with preservice elementary teachers from various normal schools in Buenos Aires and made a first analysis of the results. The collection of data recovered so far shows that some non-scientific conceptions are indeed part of the prospective teachers' (scientific) background and, therefore, that the issue deserves special attention during their formal training.

It has been known for two decades that sunspots both absorb and advance the phase of solar f and p-modes. More recently, Time-Distance and other local helioseismic techniques have been used to probe active regions by exploring phase shifts which are interpreted as travel-time perturbations. Although absorption is an intrinsically magnetic effect, phase shifts may be produced by both thermal and magnetic effects (and of course flows, though these can be factored out by averaging travel times in opposite directions). We will show how these two effects alter wave phase, and conclude that phase shifts in umbrae are predominantly thermal, whilst those in highly inclined field characteristic of penumbrae are essentially magnetic. The two effects are generally not additive.

In recent years, the local helioseismology has become a highly effective tool for investigating subphotospheric layers of the Sun, which can yield fairly detailed distributions of the subphotospheric temperatures and large-scale plasma flows based on the spectra of the oscillations observed at the photospheric layers and the observed peculiarities of propagation of magnetoacoustic waves in this medium (Zhao et al. (2001), Kosovichev (2006)). Unfortunately, the effects of temperature and the magnetic field on the wave propagation speed have not yet been separated Kosovichev (2006), so that the structure of the sunspot magnetic field in deep layers, beneath the photosphere, remains a subject of purely theoretical analysis. In his analysis of some theoretical models of the subphotospheric layers of sunspots based on recent helioseismological data, Kosovichev (2006) concluded that Parker's (“spaghetti”) cluster model Parker (1979) is most appropriate. In this model, the magnetic flux in the sunspot umbra is concentrated into separate, strongly compressed, vertical magnetic flux tubes that are interspaced with plasma that is almost free of magnetic field; the plasma can move between these tubes.

Helioseismology has provided us with the unique knowledge of the interior structure and dynamics of the Sun, and the variations with the solar cycle. However, the basic mechanisms of solar magnetic activity, formation of sunspots and active regions are still unknown. Determining the physical properties of the solar dynamo, detecting emerging active regions and observing the subsurface dynamics of sunspots are among the most important and challenging problems. The current status and perspectives of helioseismology are briefly discussed.

We present results of numerical 3D simulation of propagation of MHD waves in sunspots. We used two self consistent magnetohydrostatic background models of sunspots. There are two main differences between these models: (i) the topology of the magnetic field and (ii) dependence of the horizontal profile of the sound speed on depth. The model with convex shape of the magnetic field lines near the photosphere has non-zero horizorntal perturbations of the sound speed up to the depth of 7.5 Mm (deep model). In the model with concave shape of the magnetic field lines near the photosphere Δ c/c is close to zero everywhere below 2 Mm (shallow model). Strong Alfven wave is generated at the wave source location in the deep model. This wave is almost unnoticeable in the shallow model. Using filtering technique we separated magnetoacoustic and magnetogravity waves. It is shown, that inside the sunspot magnetoacoustic and magnetogravity waves are not spatially separated unlike the case of the horizontally uniform background model. The sunspot causes anisotropy of the amplitude distribution along the wavefront and changes the shape of the wavefront. The amplitude of the waves is reduced inside the sunspot. This effect is stronger for the magnetogravity waves than for magnetoacoustic waves. The shape of the wavefront of the magnetogravity waves is distorted stronger as well. The deep model causes bigger anisotropy for both mgnetoacoustic and magneto gravity waves than the shallow model.