We examine the star forming phenomenon as it can be encountered in galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which possibly contains the largest homogeneous sample of star forming galaxy spectra to date.

After eliminating all spectra with an insufficient signal-to-noise ratio, without strong emission lines, and without the [OII] λ3727 Å line, which is necessary for the determination of the gas metallicity (which excludes galaxies with redshift ≲ 0.024–0.025), our sample contains ~6000 spectra of star forming galaxies.

Through a detailed stellar population analysis employing evolutionary synthesis methods we determined the stellar composition of these galaxies, that is, the masses, ages and metallicities of their partial stellar populations.

We find that most, possibly all, galaxies of our sample contain, apart from the presently bursting, ionising young generation (≤ 107 yrs), old (≥ 109 yrs) and intermediate (between 107 and 109 yrs) populations, whereas the old population dominates the stellar mass (but not the light).

We also find that high (stellar) mass galaxies have higher gas metallicities and lower present star formation rates relative to their total (stellar) masses, than low mass galaxies, indicating a higher chemical evolution degree for high mass galaxies.

Furthermore, we find that gas enrichment mechanisms in star forming galaxies do not vary with galactic mass, being the same for low- and high-mass galaxies on average. Gas enrichment mechanisms seem to present a greater variety at the high-mass end, though, indicating a more complex assembly history for high-mass galaxies.

Mozambique has been proposed as a host for one of the future Square Kilometre Array stations in Southern Africa. However, Mozambique does not possess a university astronomy department and only recently has there been interest in developing one. South Africa has been funding students at the MSc and PhD level, as well as researchers. Additionally, Mozambicans with Physics degrees have been funded at the MSc level. With the advent of the International Year of Astronomy, there has been a very strong drive, from these students, to establish a successful astronomy department in Mozambique. The launch of the commemorations during the 2008 World Space Week was very successful and Mozambique is to be used to motivate similar African countries who lack funds but are still trying to take part in the International Year of Astronomy. There hare been limited resources and funding, however there is a strong will to carry this momentum into 2009 and, with this, influence the Government to introduce Astronomy into its national curriculum and at University level. Mozambique's motto for the International Year of Astronomy is “Descobre o teu Universo”.

Using the ESO NTT/SUSI2 telescope, we observed TWA22AB during five different observing runs over 1.2 years to measure its trigonometric parallax and proper motion. HARPS at the ESO 3.6m telescope was also used to measure the system's radial velocity over 2 years. Based on trigonometric-parallax, proper-motion and radial-velocity measurements, we re-analyzed the membership of TWA22AB of the young, nearby associations TW Hydrae, β Pictoris and Tucana–Horologium.

History and present state of astronomy in a small North-Eastern European country are considered. There is a rather big number (about 35) of professional astronomers in Estonia, including 21 IAU members. Through some outstanding persons, astronomy in Estonia has significant relations with the society. The same can be said about the culture. Well-developed astronomy has contributed into the cooperation of Estonia with the European Space Agency, and thus, has an indirect effect to the country's economy.

HERMES is a new, multi-object high resolution spectrometer for the 3.9m Anglo Australian Telescope, using the existing 2dF positioner. The primary goal of the HERMES survey is to unravel the history of the Galaxy from detailed elemental abundances for about 1.2 million individual stars. The HERMES chemical tagging survey concentrates on the 5000 to 8000 Å window at a resolving power of 30,000 in order to identify dissolved star formation aggregates and ascertain the importance of mergers throughout the history of the Galaxy.

I will review the new details on AGN feedback revealed by recent Chandra observations of M84 and present its theoretical modeling. Using the results of COSMOS survey I will present the direct measurement of halo occupation statistics for radio galaxies.

In recent years. we have spectroscopically observed thousands of counterparts of selected ROSAT bright sources in the sacy project (Search for Associations Containing Young stars). We demonstrated that hundreds of the young stars found this way belong to nearby young, loose associations, some detected only in sacy, with ages in the range from 5 to 100 Myr. For their ages, these associations show no trace of their primitive nurseries, which poses some difficulties as to their origins. Nevertheless, there are some associations clearly associated with young open clusters, such as the ϵ Cha association (6 Myr) with the η Cha cluster, and the Argus association with IC 2391 (40 Myr). There seem to exist also more subtle connections, such as the AB Dor association (75 Myr) with the Pleiades. Here, we present evidence of the connections of young associations to open clusters, to understand their origin and their possible insertion in the cluster infant-mortality and Gould Belt scenarios.

The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) is a large-scale, near-infrared (H-band), high-resolution (R ~ 30,000), high S/N (≳100) spectroscopic survey of Milky Way stellar populations. APOGEE will operate from 1.51–1.68μm, a region that includes useful absorption lines from at least fifteen chemical species including α, odd-Z, and iron peak elements. The APOGEE instrument has a novel design featuring 300 science fibers feeding light to a mosaiced VPH grating and a six-element camera encased in a liquid nitrogen-cooled cryostat. A three year bright-time observing campaign will enable APOGEE to observe approximately 100,000 red giants across the Galactic bulge, disk and halo.

We summarize the results from numerical simulations of mass outflows from AGN. We focus on simulations of outflows driven by radiation from large-scale inflows. We discuss the properties of these outflows in the context of the so-called AGN feedback problem. Our main conclusion is that this type of outflow is efficient in removing matter but inefficient in removing energy.

In order to clarify the physics of AGN feedback and feeding, we need to understand the interstellar medium (ISM) in the central several tens of parsecs in galaxies where our observational and theoretical knowledge is relatively poor. Here we discuss feedback processes due to strong far UV and X-ray radiation, as well as the dynamical effect of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) based on new high-resolution numerical simulations of the ISM in the central R ≤ 32 pc region around a SMBH at the center of a galaxy.

Magellanic Clouds are of extreme importance to study the star-formation process in low-metallicity environments. Here, we discuss the clustering properties of the pre-main-sequence candidates and young embedded stellar objects in N 11, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Deep archival HST/ACS photometry is used to derive color–magnitude diagrams of the associations in N 11 and of the foreground field population. These data are complemented by archival infrared Spitzer data which allow detection of young embedded stellar objects. The spatial distribution of the pre-main-sequence candidates and young embedded stellar objects is discussed. The degree of clustering is derived using the minimal-spanning-tree method. No significant difference is found in clustering degree of young blue main-sequence stars and faint pre-main-sequence candidates, suggesting that they might be part of the same formation process.

This paper examines the transnational migratory process and identity formation of a Japanese astronomer, Mutsumi Ishitkuta (born 1930). He moved to Peru in 1957 to build a solar observatory in the Andes Mountains, and settled there to develop a foundation for basic sciences in Peru. Through life story interviews, I explore the transnational migratory process of this scientist focusing on his profession in relationship to certain people, events, and situations that contributed to his identity formation. Tracing Ishitsuka's story may enable us to deepen our thoughts of scientists' identity and their role for the society.

We study the interplay between stellar population of the Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCG) and cluster global properties. We use X-ray properties from Chandra, ROSAT and ASCA observations and BCGs spectra from SDSS-DR6. Using STARLIGHT we determined the star formation history of the BCGs and look for relations with the intra-cluster gas properties. Our first results show no correlation between the recent star formation with x-ray temperature and dynamic state. An important star formation is happening in cool-core Cluster. This new stellar population has low metallicity, pointing to an external source of cold gas to form stars.

We demonstrate that unresolved X-ray emission from the bulge of M31 is composed of at least three different components: (i) Broad-band emission from a large number of faint sources – mainly accreting white dwarfs and active binaries, associated with the old stellar population, similar to the Galactic Ridge X-ray emission of the Milky Way. (ii) Soft emission from ionized gas with temperature of about ~ 300 eV and mass of ~ 4 × 106 M⊙. The gas distribution is significantly elongated along the minor axis of the galaxy suggesting that it may be outflowing in the direction perpendicular to the galactic disk. The shadows cast on the gas by spiral arms and the 10-kpc star-forming ring confirm large off-plane extent of the gas. (iii) Hard unresolved emission from spiral arms, most likely associated with protostars and young stellar objects located in the star-forming regions.

The dense cores of X-ray emitting gaseous halos of large elliptical galaxies with temperatures below about 0.8 keV show two prominent Fe XVII emission features, which provide a sensitive diagnostic tool to measure the effects of resonant scattering. We present here high-resolution spectra of five bright nearby elliptical galaxies, obtained with the Reflection Grating Spectrometers (RGS) on the XMM-Newton satellite. The spectra for the cores of four of the galaxies show the Fe XVII line at 15.01 Angstrom being suppressed by resonant scattering. The data for NGC 4636 in particular allow the effects of resonant scattering to be studied in detail. Using deprojected density and temperature profiles for this galaxy obtained with the Chandra satellite, we model the radial intensity profiles of the strongest resonance lines, accounting for the effects of resonant scattering, for different values of the characteristic turbulent velocity. Comparing the model to the data, we find that the isotropic turbulent velocities on spatial scales smaller than about 1 kpc are less than 100 km/s and the turbulent pressure support in the galaxy core is smaller than 5% of the thermal pressure at the 90% confidence level, and less than 20% at 99% confidence. Neglecting the effects of resonant scattering in spectral fitting of the inner 2 kpc core of NGC 4636 will lead to underestimates of the chemical abundances of Fe and O by about 10-20%.

This review deals with the importance of astronomy for international development a nd capacity building. I shall summarize the present global state of astronomical research and education and describe current global astronomy education and development programs being carried out by the IAU and others. A decadal strategic plan will be described that envisages a substantial increase in IAU education and development activities during the next decade.

Using the Hyperz code (Bolzonella et al. 2000) we present photometric redshift estimates for a random sample of galaxies selected from the SDSS/DR7 and GALEX/DR4, for which spectroscopic redshifts are also available.

We confirm that the inclusion of ultraviolet photometry improves the accuracy of photo-zs for those galaxies with g* – r* ≤ 0.7 and zspec ≤ 0.2. We also address the problem of how binary interactions can affect photo-z estimates, and find that their effect is negligible.

Starburst galaxies trace the star-formation history of the Universe throughout cosmological time. Several studies have shown that the star-formation-rate density of the Universe begins to steadily decline after the Universe had aged ~ 5.8 Gyr (redshifts z ~ 1). However, we do not yet fully understand the mechanism behind this shift in star formation at intermediate z. One possibility is that during this epoch galaxies underwent ‘downsizing,’ a shift in star formation being dominated by high- to lower-mass galaxies. Rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) observations of starburst galaxies reveal regions of young stellar clusters where massive O and B stars dominate the luminosity. Observations in the FUV (~ 1500 Å) can be used to detect starburst galaxies at z < 1 because the bright end of the rest-frame FUV spectrum is not redshifted much, and is observable in the FUV filter. Alternatively, the rest-frame FUV light from starburst galaxies at higher redshifts is shifted to longer wavelengths and must be observed in redder filters. We present a study of the starburst population at intermediate z from FUV data taken with Hubble's Solar Blind Channel (SBC) of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The number counts of FUV galaxies as a function of magnitude provide a direct statistical measure of the density and evolution of starbursts, and subsequently of the stellar clusters formed within these galaxies' environments. We present a comparison between the FUV starburst-galaxy counts at this epoch, and the local FUV counts of starbursts observed with GALEX.