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Quasars with redshifts greater than 4 are rare, and can be used to probe the structure and evolution of the early universe. Here we report the discovery of six new quasars with i-band magnitudes brighter than 19.5 and redshifts between 2.4 and 4.6 from spectroscopy with the Yunnan Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (YFOSC) at the Lijiang 2.4 m telescope in February, 2012. These quasars are in the list of z > 3.6 quasar candidates selected by using our proposed J — K/i — Y criterion and the photometric redshift estimations from the SDSS optical and UKIDSS near-IR photometric data. Nine candidates were observed by YFOSC, and five among six new quasars were identified as z > 3.6 quasars. One of the other three objects was identified as a star and the other two were unidentified due to the lower signal-to-noise ratio of their spectra. This is the first time that z > 4 quasars have been discovered using a telescope in China. Thanks to the Chinese Telescope Access Program (TAP), the redshift of 4.6 for one of these quasars was confirmed by the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) Red Channel spectroscopy. The continuum and emission line properties of these six quasars, as well as their central black hole masses and Eddington ratios, were obtained.

We propose a flare prediction method based on the AdaBoost algorithm, which constructs a strong prediction model from a combination of several basic models. Three predictors, extracted from the photospheric magnetograms, are applied as features to predict the occurrence of flares with a certain level over 24 hours following the time when the magnetogram is recorded. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, comparisons of experimental results with respect to some existing methods are given. The results show that an improvement is achieved in predicting the occurrences of large flares.

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST, also called the Guo Shou Jing Telescope) is a special reflecting Schmidt telescope. LAMOST's special design allows both a large aperture (effective aperture of 3.6 m–4.9 m) and a wide field of view (FOV) (5°). It has an innovative active reflecting Schmidt configuration which continuously changes the mirror's surface that adjusts during the observation process and combines thin deformable mirror active optics with segmented active optics. Its primary mirror (6.67 m × 6.05 m) and active Schmidt mirror (5.74m × 4.40m) are both segmented, and composed of 37 and 24 hexagonal sub-mirrors respectively. By using a parallel controllable fiber positioning technique, the focal surface of 1.75 m in diameter can accommodate 4000 optical fibers. Also, LAMOST has 16 spectrographs with 32 CCD cameras. LAMOST will be the telescope with the highest rate of spectral acquisition. As a national large scientific project, the LAMOST project was formally proposed in 1996, and approved by the Chinese government in 1997. The construction started in 2001, was completed in 2008 and passed the official acceptance in June 2009. The LAMOST pilot survey was started in October 2011 and the spectroscopic survey will launch in September 2012. Up to now, LAMOST has released more than 480000 spectra of objects. LAMOST will make an important contribution to the study of the large-scale structure of the Universe, structure and evolution of the Galaxy, and cross-identification of multi-waveband properties in celestial objects.

This paper describes the data release of the LAMOST pilot survey, which includes data reduction, calibration, spectral analysis, data products and data access. The accuracy of the released data and the information about the FITS headers of spectra are also introduced. The released data set includes 319 000 spectra and a catalog of these objects.

We present the results of the Chandra high-resolution observation of the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 7590. This object was reported to show no X-ray absorption in the low-spatial resolution ASCA data. The XMM-Newton observations show that the X-ray emission of NGC 7590 is dominated by an off-nuclear ultra-luminous X-ray source (ULX) and extended emissions from the host galaxy, and the nucleus is rather weak, likely hosting a Compton-thick AGN. Our recent Chandra observation of NGC 7590 enables us to effectively remove the X-ray contamination from the ULX and the extended component. The nuclear source remains undetected at the flux level of ∼ 4 × 10⁻¹⁵ erg cm⁻² s⁻¹. Although not detected, the Chandra data give a 2–10 keV flux upper limit of ∼ 6.1 × 10⁻¹⁵ erg cm⁻² s⁻¹ (at a 3σ level), a factor of three less than the XMM-Newton value, strongly supporting the Compton-thick nature of the nucleus. In addition, we detected five off-nuclear X-ray point sources within the galaxy's D₂₅ ellipse, all with 2 − 10 keV luminosity above 2 × 10³⁸ erg s⁻¹ (assuming the distance of NGC 7590). In particular, the ULX previously identified by ROSAT data is resolved by Chandra into two distinct X-ray sources. Our analysis highlights the importance of high spatial resolution images in discovering and studying ULXs.

The spatial distribution of short Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in their host galaxies provides us with an opportunity to investigate their origins. Based on the currently observed distribution of short GRBs relative to their host galaxies, we obtain the fraction of the component that traces the mergers of binary compact objects and the one that traces star formation rate (such as massive stars) in early- and late-type host galaxies. From the analysis of projected offset distribution and only based on population synthesis and massive star models, we find that the fraction of massive stars is 0.37^+0.42_−0.37 with an error at the 1σ level for a sample with 22 short GRBs in the literature. From these results, it is hard to accept that the origin of short GRBs with observed statistics is well described by current models using only the offset distribution. The uncertainties in observational localizations of short GRBs also strongly affect the resulting fraction.

Based on observations of ¹²CO (J=2–1), we select targets from archived Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) data of IRAS 02459+6029 and IRAS 22528+5936 as samples of cloud-cloud collision, according to the criteria given by Vallee. Then we use the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) A band (8.28 μm) images and the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) (1.4 GHz) continuum images to investigate the association between molecular clouds traced by the CO contour maps. The distribution of dust and ionized hydrogen shows an obvious association with the CO contour maps toward IRAS 02459+6029. However, in the possible collision region of IRAS 22528+5936, NVSS continuum radiation is not detected and the MSX sources are merely associated with the central star. The velocity fields of the two regions indicate the direction of the pressure and interaction. In addition, we have identified candidates of young stellar objects (YSOs) by using data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) in JHK bands expressed in a color-color diagram. The distribution of YSOs shows that the possible collision region is denser than other regions. All the evidence suggests that IRAS 02459+6029 could be an example of cloud-cloud collision, and that IRAS 22528+5936 could be two separate non-colliding clouds.

We have calculated the structural properties of a strange quark star with a static model in the presence of a strong magnetic field. To this end, we use the MIT bag model with a density dependent bag constant. To parameterize the density dependence of the bag constant, we have used our results for the lowest order constrained variational calculation of the asymmetric nuclear matter. By calculating the equation of state of strange quark matter, we have shown that the pressure of this system increases by increasing both density and magnetic field. Finally, we have investigated the effect of density dependence of the bag constant on the structural properties of a strange quark star.

A photometric solution of an A-type W UMa binary, GSC 0763–0572, is examined with a revised orbital period. The overcontact degree is found to be f = 40.66%, with a low mass ratio of q = 0.2554. The result demonstrates an unambiguous increase in the orbital period with a relative period change of ΔP/P = +5.69 × 10⁻⁷ d yr⁻¹. This indicates that GSC 0763–0572 is undergoing a process of mass transfer from the secondary component to the primary one with a rate of relative mass change of Δm₁/m = +5.18 × 10⁻⁸ yr⁻¹, for a conservative model of mass transfer. We find that GSC 0763–0572 might transform into a rapidly rotating star, if total spin angular momentum increases until it is greater than one-third of the orbital angular momentum, without breaking the contact configuration.

We present results of new radio observations of the Moon at L band with the synthesis telescope of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory Synthesis Telescope. The resolution and temperature sensitivity of the observations are 159'' × 87'' and 1.7K, respectively. The main results are: (1) the lunar brightness temperature averaged over the whole disk is about 233 K while the average brightness temperature for the four quadrants are 228.1K (NE), 239.7K (NW), 233.9K (SW) and 228.8K (SE). The observations reveal large temperature and spatial variations on the Moon for the first time. The highest brightness temperature is about 257 K and it is located along the lunar equator, to the west. The total uncertainty is about 5% due to the absolute accuracy of the fluxes of the primary calibrators; (2) the total degree of polarization is about 6%. Both polarization intensity and degree of polarization increase from the disk's center to the limb, and the distribution of the degree of polarization along the limb is not uniform; (3) the new data are used to study the properties of regolith, such as dielectric constant and thickness distribution. The results show that the lunar regolith's thickness increases from the NW (mare area) to the SE (highland area) regions on the lunar surface.