Based on our independently developed data processing software, the real-time reduction of the instantaneous state vectors of satellite during the maneuver stage near to perilune is analyzed via experimental observations. Results show that it is a quick and practical method to monitor the orbit evolution and the lunar capture of Chang'E-1 satellite.

Division XI connects astronomers using space techniques or particle detectors for an extremely large range of investigations, from in-situ studies of bodies in the solar system to orbiting observatories studying the Universe in wavelenghts ranging from radio waves to γ-rays, to underground detectors for cosmic neutrino radiation.

Interstellar masers are unique probes of the environments in which they arise. In studies of high-mass star formation their primary function has been as signposts of these regions and they have been used as probes of the kinematics and physical conditions in only a few sources. With a few notable exceptions, we know relatively little about the evolutionary phase the different maser species trace, nor their location with respect to other star formation tracers. While detailed studies of a small number of maser regions can reveal much about them, other information can only be obtained through large, systematic searches. In particular, such surveys are vital in efforts to determine an evolutionary sequence for the common maser species, and there is growing evidence that methanol masers may trace an earlier phase than the other common maser species of OH and water.

This paper emphasizes the connection between solar and extra-solar debris disks: how models and observations of the Solar System are helping us understand the debris disk phenomenon, and vice versa, how debris disks are helping us place our Solar System into context.

The core structure of early-type galaxies is revisited in light of recent results from the ACS Virgo and Fornax Cluster Surveys. These surveys are comprised of HST/ACS g, z band images for a representative sample of 143 early-type galaxies, spanning a factor 720 in B-band luminosity. The data indicates a clear transition in the core structure going from the brightest to the faintest galaxies. In contrast to previous claims, however, this transition is found to be a continuous function of galaxy magnitude. We characterize the core structure in terms of deviations of the observed surface brightness profile – measured within ~ 2% of the galaxy effective radius – relative to the inner extrapolation of the Sérsic law that best fits the profiles on larger scales. Virtually all galaxies fainter than MB ~ −20 mag contain distinct stellar nuclei, and are described by surface brightness profiles that lie above the Sérsic extrapolation, while the reverse is true for brighter galaxies. The latter are also known to host supermassive black holes. A relation between SBHs and stellar nuclei is suggested by the fact that both types of “central massive objects” contain the same fraction, 0.2% of the total mass of the host galaxy.

We performed phase-referencing VLBI astrometric observations of the H2O maser source IRAS 02395+6244, located well beyond the solar circle. We measured its heliocentric distance to be 5.49 ± 0.80 kpc, implying a Galactocentric distance of 12.5 ± 0.5 kpc and a distance of 270 ± 40 pc above the Galactic plane.

High-resolution seeing limited and adaptive optics near-infrared imaging observations of the stellar cluster within about one parsec of the massive black hole Sagittarius A* allow us to obtain a detailed picture of the structure of the nuclear star cluster of the Milky Way. We find that the stellar number counts and the diffuse light of the unresolved stellar population can be described very well by a stellar density function in the form of a broken-power law. This agrees well with theoretical predictions on the structure of a dynamically relaxed star cluster around a massive black hole. However, the cusp slope is found to be too shallow, which may be related to mixing of different stellar populations and continuous star formation, phenomena that are not taken into account by current theory. Mass densities larger than 107 solar masses per pc3 are reached within 0.1 pc of the central black hole. Intriguingly, up to several tens of percent of the total cluster mass in the central parsec may be in the form of dark stellar remnants.

A new 7-beam methanol multibeam receiver is being used to survey the Galaxy for newly forming massive stars, that are pinpointed by strong methanol maser emission at 6.668 GHz. The receiver, jointly constructed by Jodrell Bank Observatory (JBO) and the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF), was successfully commissioned at Parkes in January 2006. The Parkes-Jodrell survey of the Milky Way for methanol masers is two orders of magnitude faster than previous systematic surveys using 30-m class dishes, and is the first systematic survey of the entire Galactic plane. The first 53 days of observations with the Parkes telescope have yielded 518 methanol sources, of which 218 are new discoveries. We present the survey methodology as well as preliminary results and analysis.

The deepest near-IR variability survey of the ρ Ophiuchi cluster with the WFCAM/UKIRT has been used to uncover a new population of young low mass objects. Evidence for the existence of discs around the new objects has been found when combining data with IRAC/Spitzer observations. A new insight on the frequency and dynamics of discs around low mass YSOs is given, essential for understanding the origin and evolution of circumstellar discs and ultimately the environment for planet formation.

Early-type dwarf galaxies dominate cluster populations, but their formation and evolutionary histories are poorly understood. The ALFALFA (Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA) survey has completed observations of the Virgo Cluster in the declination range of 6 – 16 degrees. Less than 2% of the early-type dwarf population is detected, a significantly lower fraction than reported in previous papers based on more limited samples. In contrast ~30% of the irregular/BCD dwarf population is detected. The detected early-type galaxies tend to be located in the outer regions of the cluster, with a concentration in the direction of the M Cloud. Many show evidence for ongoing/recent star formation. Galaxies such as these may be undergoing morphological transition due to cluster environmental effects.

The results in the N-body simulations in Giersz & Heggie (1996) show that although the masses segregate as expected during core collapse, after core collapse there is self-similar evolution with very little further evidence of mass segregation even though the system has not reached equipartition. Binary stars halt core collapse and it is possible that they also halt the tendency toward equipartition. To investigate this problem, we construct two models. One model is a two-component model which assumes that binary stars form in the region dominated by heavy stars. The other model is a single mass model which assumes that binary stars form only in the region of the core. In both models, when the binary heating term is included, we find the post-collapse evolution to be self-similar. The aim of our work is to combine these two models to form a two-component model which assumes that binary formation only occurs in the core.

The business meeting of the Division XI Working Group on Particle Astrophysics took place in the morning of 25 August 2006, and was attended by 14 participants.

We present the latest results on Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) fluctuations from early epochs from deep Spitzer data. The results show the existence of significant CIB fluctuations at the IRAC wavelengths (3.6 to 8 μm) which remain after removing galaxies down to very faint levels. These fluctuations must arise from populations with a significant clustering component, but only low levels of the shot noise. There are no correlations between the source-subtracted IRAC maps and the corresponding fields observed with the HST ACS at optical wavelengths. Taken together, these data imply that 1) the sources producing the CIB fluctuations are individually faint with Sν < a few nJy at 3.6 and 4.5 μm; 2) have different clustering pattern than the more recent galaxy populations; 3) are located within the first 0.7 Gyr (unless these fluctuations can somehow be produced by - so far unobserved - local galaxies of extremely low luminosity and with the unusual for local populations clustering pattern), 4) produce contribution to the net CIB flux of at least 1-2 nW m−2 sr−1 at 3.6 and 4.5 μm and must have mass-to-light ratio significantly below the present-day populations, and 5) they have angular density of ~ a few per arcsec2 and are in the confusion of the present day instruments, but can be individually observable with JWST.

We present an overview of recent astrometric results with VERA. Since 2004, we have been conducting astrometry of tens of Galactic maser sources with VERA, and recently obtained trigonometric parallaxes for several sources, with distances ranging from 180 pc to 5.3 kpc. In this paper, we briefly summarize the results for Galactic star-forming regions, including S269, Orion-KL, NGC 1333, ρ-oph, NGC 281 and others.

The Business Meeting opened with a recall of the memory of a member of the Organizing Committee, Willem Wamsteker. N. Kaifu, past president of the Working Group, was thanked for his outstanding service.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope scheduled for launch in 2013. JWST will find the first stars and galaxies that formed in the early universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way galaxy. JWST will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System. JWST's instruments are designed to work primarily in the infrared range of 1 - 28 μm, with some capability in the visible range. JWST will have a large segmented mirror, ~6.5 m in diameter, and will be diffraction-limited at 2 μm (< 0.1 arcsec resolution). JWST will be placed in an L2 orbit about 1.5 million km from the Earth. The instruments will provide imaging, coronography, and multi-object and integral-field spectroscopy across the 1 - 28 μm wavelength range. The breakthrough capabilities of JWST will enable new studies of massive stars from the Milky Way to the early universe.

The mass and dynamics of protoplanetary disks are dominated by molecular hydrogen (H2). However, observationally very little is known about the H2. In this paper, we discuss two projects aimed to constrain the properties of H2 in the disk's planet forming region (R<50AU). First, we present a sensitive survey for pure-rotational H2 emission at 12.278 and 17.035 μm in a sample of nearby Herbig Ae/Be and T Tauri stars using VISIR, ESO's VLT high-resolution mid-infrared spectrograph. Second, we report on a search for H2 ro-vibrational emission at 2.1228, 2.2233 and 2.2477 μm in the classical T Tauri star LkHα 264 and the debris disk 49 Cet employing CRIRES, ESO's VLT high-resolution near-infrared spectrograph.

VISIR project: none of the sources show H2 mid-IR emission. The observed disks contain less than a few tenths of MJupiter of optically thin H2 at 150 K, and less than a few MEarth at T>300 K. % and higher T. Our non-detections are consistent with the low flux levels expected from the small amount of H2 gas in the surface layer of a Chiang and Goldreich (1997) Herbig Ae two-layer disk model. In our sources the H2 and dust in the surface layer have not significantly departed from thermal coupling (Tgas/Tdust<2) and the gas-to-dust ratio in the surface layer is very likely <1000.

CRIRES project: The H2 lines at 2.1218 μm and 2.2233 μm are detected in LkHα 264. An upper limit on the 2.2477 μm H2 line flux in LkHα 264 is derived. 49 Cet does not exhibit H2 emission in any of observed lines. There are a few MMoon of optically thin hot H2 in the inner disk (∼0.1 AU) of LkHα 264, and less than a tenth of a MMoon of hot H2 in the inner disk of 49 Cet. The shape of the 1–0 S(0) line indicates that LkHα disk is close to face-on (i<35o). The measured 1–0 S(0)/1–0 S(1) and 2–1 S(1)/1–0 S(1) line ratios in LkHα 264 indicate that the H2 is thermally excited at T<1500 K. The lack of H2 emission in the NIR spectra of 49 Cet and the absence of Hα emission suggest that the gas in the inner disk of 49 Cet has dissipated.

The Arcetri/Bologna H2O maser group has been monitoring the 1.3-cm water maser emission from a sample of 43 star-forming regions (SFRs) and 22 late-type stars for about 20 years at a sampling rate of 4-5 observations each year, using the 32-m Medicina Radio Telescope (HPBW 1.′9 at 22 GHz). For the late-type stars we observe representative samples of OH/IR-stars, Mira's, semi-regular variables, and supergiants. The SFR-sample spans a large interval in FIR luminosity of the associated Young Stellar Object (YSO), from 20 L⊙ to 1.5 × 106 L⊙, and offers a unique data base for the study of the long-term (years) variability of the maser emission in regions of star formation.

This presentation concerns only the masers in SFRs. The information obtained from single-dish monitoring is complementary to what is extracted from higher-resolution (VLA and VLBI) observations, and can better explore the velocity domain and the long-term variability therein.

We characterize the variability of the sources in various ways and we study how it depends on the luminosity and other properties of the associated YSO and its environment.

We use observations from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to measure the atomic hydrogen gas content of star-forming galaxies at z = 0.24 (i.e. a look-backtime of ~3 Gyr). To measure the HI 21 cm emission signal we stack the signal from 121 galaxies with known optical positions and redshifts. We find an average HI mass for the galaxies of (2.26 ± 0.90) × 109 M⊙. We translate this HI measurement into a cosmic density of neutral gas at z=0.24 of Ωgas = (0.91 ± 0.42) × 10−3. This value is consistent with that estimated from damped Lyα systems around this redshift.

The binary fraction, η, of a globular cluster (GC) is a key parameter in determining its dynamical evolution, as well as its content of rare stars, such as cataclysmic variables and blue stragglers. The precise value of η for a GC was historically difficult to constrain due to an inability to obtain reliable photometry for faint objects in dense stellar fields. However, today, the HST allows us to image the main sequence of the nearest GCs to their terminations. Using HST observations we constrain η for NGC 6397. While the necessary computing power is now available to realistically simulate entire GCs, large discrepancies in the assumed primordial binary fraction, ηp, of GCs still exist. Estimates range from 5% (Hurley et al. 2007) to 100% (Ivanova et al. 2005). The N-body models of Hurley et al. (2007) suggest that η beyond the half-mass radius remains close to ηp, while cluster evolution can increase the value in the core. We find η for NGC 6397 is 15.2±0.8% in a field centered on the core, and 1.1±0.3% in a field beyond the half mass radius. These findings suggests ηp ~ 1%.