Table of contents

The discovery of a planetary companion to the intermediate-mass late-type giant star HD173416 from precise Doppler surveys of G and K giants at Xinglong station and Okayama Astrophysical Observatory (OAO) is presented in this letter. The planet has a minimum mass of 2.7 M_J, an eccentricity of 0.21, a semimajor axis of 1.16 AU and an orbital period of 324 days.

We report the discovery of 4 strong gravitational lensing systems by visual inspections of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey images of galaxy clusters in Data Release 6 (SDSS DR6). Two of the four systems show Einstein rings while the others show tangential giant arcs. These arcs or rings have large angular separations (> 8'') from the bright central galaxies and show bluer color compared with the red cluster galaxies. In addition, we found 5 probable and 4 possible lenses by galaxy clusters.

Solar flare gamma-ray emissions from energetic ions and electrons have been detected and measured to GeV energies since 1980. In addition, neutrons produced in solar flares with 100 MeV to GeV energies have been observed at the Earth. These emissions are produced by the highest energy ions and electrons accelerated at the Sun and they provide our only direct (albeit secondary) knowledge about the properties of the accelerator(s) acting in a solar flare. The solar flares, which have direct evidence for pion-decay gamma-rays, are unique and are the focus of this paper. We review our current knowledge of the highest energy solar emissions, and how the characteristics of the acceleration process are deduced from the observations. Results from the RHESSI, INTEGRAL and CORONAS missions will also be covered. The review will also cover the solar flare capabilities of the new mission, FERMI GAMMA RAY SPACE TELESCOPE, launched on 2008 June 11. Finally, we discuss the requirements for future missions to advance this vital area of solar flare physics.

Based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR6 (SDSS) and the Millennium Simulation (MS), we investigate the alignment between galaxies and large-scale structure. For this purpose, we develop two new statistical tools, namely the alignment correlation function and the cos(2θ)-statistic. The former is a two-dimensional extension of the traditional two-point correlation function and the latter is related to the ellipticity correlation function used for cosmic shear measurements. Both are based on the cross correlation between a sample of galaxies with orientations and a reference sample which represents the large-scale structure. We apply the new statistics to the SDSS galaxy catalog. The alignment correlation function reveals an overabundance of reference galaxies along the major axes of red, luminous (L ≲ L_*) galaxies out to projected separations of 60 h-¹Mpc. The signal increases with central galaxy luminosity. No alignment signal is detected for blue galaxies. The cos(2θ)-statistic yields very similar results. Starting from a MS semi-analytic galaxy catalog, we assign an orientation to each red, luminous and central galaxy, based on that of the central region of the host halo (with size similar to that of the stellar galaxy). As an alternative, we use the orientation of the host halo itself. We find a mean projected misalignment between a halo and its central region of ∼ 25°. The misalignment decreases slightly with increasing luminosity of the central galaxy. Using the orientations and luminosities of the semi-analytic galaxies, we repeat our alignment analysis on mock surveys of the MS. Agreement with the SDSS results is good if the central orientations are used. Predictions using the halo orientations as proxies for central galaxy orientations overestimate the observed alignment by more than a factor of 2. Finally, the large volume of the MS allows us to generate a two-dimensional map of the alignment correlation function, which shows the reference galaxy distribution to be flattened parallel to the orientations of red luminous galaxies with axis ratios of ∼ 0.5 and ∼ 0.75 for halo and central orientations, respectively. These ratios are almost independent of scale out to 60 h-¹Mpc.

We present a quantitative study of the classification of Extremely Red Objects (EROs). The analysis is based on the multi-band spatial- and ground-based observations (HST/ACS-BViz, HST/NICMOS- JH, VLT-JHK) in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF). Overatotal sky area of 5.50 arcmin² in the UDF, we select 24 EROs with the color criterion (i – K)_Vega > 3.9, corresponding to (I – K)_Vega ≲ 4.0, down to K_Vega = 22. We develop four methods to classify EROs into Old passively evolving Galaxies (OGs) and Dusty star-forming Galaxies (DGs), including (i – K) vs. (J – K) color diagram, spectral energy distribution fitting method, Spitzer MIPS 24 μm image matching, and nonparametric measure of galaxy morphology, and found that the classification results from these methods agree well. Using these four classification methods, we classify our EROs sample into 6 OGs and 8 DGs to K_Vega < 20.5, and 8 OGs and 16 DGs to K_Vega < 22, respectively. The fraction of DGs increases from 8/14 at K_Vega < 20.5 to 16/24 at K_Vega < 22. To study the morphology of galaxies with its wavelength, we measure the central concentration and the Gini coefficient for the 24 EROs in our sample in HST/ACS-i, z and HST/NICMOS-J, H bands. We find that the morphological parameters of galaxies in our sample depend on the wavelength of observation, which suggests that caution is necessary when comparing single wavelength band images of galaxies at a variety of redshifts.

The history of the cosmological reionization is still unclear. Two ionizing sources, stars and QSOs, are believed to play important roles during this epoch. Besides the 21 cm signals, the infrared emission from Pop III stars and X-ray photons from QSOs can be powerful probes of the reionization. Here we present a cross-correlation study of the 21cm, infrared and X-ray backgrounds. The advantage of doing such cross-correlations is that we could highlight the correlated signals and eliminate irrelevant foregrounds. We develop a shell model to describe the 21 cm signals and find that Pop III stars can provide higher 21 cm signals than QSOs. Using the ROSAT data for X-ray and AKARI data for infrared, we predict various cross power spectra analytically and discuss prospects for detecting these cross-correlation signals in future low frequency radio surveys. We find that, although these cross-correlational signals have distinct features, so far, they have been difficult to detect due to the high noise of the soft X-ray and infrared backgrounds given by ROSAT and AKARI.

Detection of γ-ray emissions from a class of active galactic nuclei (viz blazars), has been one of the important findings from the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO). However, their γ-ray luminosity function has not been well determined. Few attempts have been made in earlier works, where BL Lacs and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs) have been considered as a single source class. In this paper, we investigated the evolution and γ-ray luminosity function of FSRQs and BL Lacs separately. Our investigation indicates no evolution for BL Lacs, however FSRQs show significant evolution. Pure luminosity evolution is assumed for FSRQs and exponential and power law evolution models are examined. Due to the small number of sources, the low luminosity end index of the luminosity function for FSRQs is constrained with an upper limit. BL Lac luminosity function shows no signature of break. As a consistency check, the model source distributions derived from these luminosity functions show no significant departure from the observed source distributions.

We investigate redshift distributions of three long burst samples, with the first sample containing 131 long bursts with observed redshifts, the second including 220 long bursts with pseudo-redshifts calculated by the variability-luminosity relation, and the third including 1194 long bursts with pseudo-redshifts calculated by the lag-luminosity relation, respectively. In the redshift range 0–1 the Kolmogorov–Smirnov probability of the observed redshift distribution and that of the variability-luminosity relation is large. In the redshift ranges 1–2, 2–3, 3–6.3 and 0–37, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov probabilities of the redshift distribution from lag-luminosity relation and the observed redshift distribution are also large. For the GRBs, which appear both in the two pseudo-redshift burst samples, the KS probability of the pseudo-redshift distribution from the lag-luminosity relation and the observed reshift distribution is 0.447, which is very large. Based on these results, some conclusions are drawn: i) the V-L_iso relation might be more believable than the τ-L_iso relation in low redshift ranges and the τ-L_iso relation might be more real than the V-Liso relation in high redshift ranges; ii) if we do not consider the redshift ranges, the τ-L_iso relation might be more physical and intrinsical than the V-L i_so relation.

We report on an application of gas-kinetic BGK scheme to the computation of turbulent compressible convection in the stellar interior. After incorporating the Sub-grid Scale (SGS) turbulence model into the BGK scheme, we tested the effects of numerical parameters on the quantitative relationships among the thermodynamic variables, their fluctuations and correlations in a very deep, initially gravity-stratified stellar atmosphere. Comparison indicates that the thermal properties and dynamic properties are dominated by different aspects of numerical models separately. An adjustable Deardorff constant in the SGS model c_μ.25 and an amplitude of artificial viscosity in the gas-kinetic BGK scheme C₂ = 0 are appropriate for the current study. We also calculated the density-weighted auto- and cross-correlation functions in Xiong's turbulent stellar convection theory based on which the gradient type of models of the non-local transport and the anisotropy of the turbulence were preliminarily studied. No universal relations or constant parameters were found for these models.

We believe the Babcock–Leighton process of poloidal field generation to be the main source of irregularity in the solar cycle. The random nature of this process may make the poloidal field in one hemisphere stronger than that in the other hemisphere at the end of a cycle. We expect this to induce an asymmetry in the next sunspot cycle. We look for evidence of this in the observational data and then model it theoretically with our dynamo code. Since actual polar field measurements exist only from the 1970s, we use the polar faculae number data recorded by Sheeley (1991, 2008) as a proxy of the polar field and estimate the hemispheric asymmetry of the polar field in different solar minima during the major part of the twentieth century. This asymmetry is found to have a reasonable correlation with the asymmetry of the next cycle. We then run our dynamo code by feeding information about this asymmetry at the successive minima and compare the results with observational data. We find that the theoretically computed asymmetries of different cycles compare favorably with the observational data, with the correlation coefficient being 0.73. Due to the coupling between the two hemispheres, any hemispheric asymmetry tends to get attenuated with time. The hemispheric asymmetry of a cycle either from observational data or from theoretical calculations statistically tends to be less than the asymmetry in the polar field (as inferred from the faculae data) in the preceding minimum. This reduction factor turns out to be 0.43 and 0.51 respectively in observational data and theoretical simulations.