The history of asteroid families, from their discovery back in 1918, until the present time, is briefly reviewed. Two threads have been followed: on the development of the theories of asteroid motion and the computation of proper elements, and on the methods of classification themselves. Three distinct periods can be distinguished: the first one until mid-1930s, devoted to discovery and first attempts towards understanding of the properties of families; the second one, until early 1980s, characterized by a growing understanding of their importance as key evidence of the collisional evolution; the third one, characterized by an explosion of work and results, comprises the contemporary era. An assessment is given of the state-of-the-art and possible directions for the future effort, focusing on the dynamical studies, and on improvements of classification methods to cope with ever increasing data set.

Through out the ancient history, Chinese astronomers had made tremendous achievements. Since the main purpose of the ancient Chinese astronomy was to study the correlation between man and the universe, all the Emperors made ancient Chinese astronomy the highly regarded science throughout the history. After a brief introduction of the achievement of ancient Chinese astronomy, I describe the beginnings of modern astronomy research in China in the 20th century. Benefiting from the fast development of Chinese economy, the research in astronomy in China has made remarkable progress in recent years. The number of astronomers has doubled in the past ten years, and the number of graduate students has grown over 1300. The current budget for astronomy research is ten times larger than that ten years ago. The research covers all fields in astronomy, from galaxies to the Sun. The recent progress in both the instruments, such as the Guo Shoujing's telescope, a Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), and the theoretical research will be briefly presented. The ongoing and future projects on the space- and ground-based facilities will be described, including the Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), “Chang E” (Lunar mission) project, Hard X-ray Modulate Telescope (HXMT), DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), Deep Space Solar Observatory (DSO), Chinese Antarctic Observatory (CAO), 65m steerable radio telescope, Chinese Spectral Radioheliogaph (CSRH) etc.

We apply two new state-of-the-art methods that model the distribution of observed tracers in projected phase space to lift the mass / velocity anisotropy (VA) degeneracy and deduce constraints on the mass profiles of galaxies, as well as their VA. We first show how a distribution function based method applied to the satellite kinematics of otherwise isolated SDSS galaxies shows convincing observational evidence of age matching: red galaxies have more concentrated dark matter (DM) halos than blue galaxies of the same stellar or halo mass. Then, applying the MAMPOSSt technique to M87 (traced by its red and blue globular clusters) we find that very cuspy DM is favored, unless we release priors on DM concentration or stellar mass (leading to unconstrained slope). For the Fornax dwarf spheroidal (traced by its metal-rich and metal-poor stars), the inner DM slope is unconstrained, with weak evidence for a core if the stellar mass is fixed. This highlights how priors are crucial for DM modeling. Finally, we find that blue GCs around M87 and metal-rich stars in Fornax have tangential outer VA.

WISH is a new space science mission concept whose primary goal is to study the first galaxies in the early universe. The primary science goal of the WISH mission is to push the high-redshift frontier beyond the epoch of reionization by utilizing its unique imaging and spectrocopic capabilities and the dedicated survey strategy. WISH will be a 1.5m telescope equipped with a 1000 arcmin2 wide-field Near-IR camera to conduct unique ultra-deep and wide-area sky imaging surveys in the wavelength range 1 - 5 μm. A spectroscopic mode (Integral-Field Unit) in the same Near-IR range and with a field of view of 0.5 - 1 arcmin and a spectral resolution R = 1000 is also planned. The difference between WISH and EUCLID in terms of wavelength range explains why the former concentrates on the reionization period while the latter focuses on the universe at z < 3. WISH and JWST feature different instantaneous fields of view and are therefore also very complementary.

In astronomical and cosmological studies one often wishes to infer some properties of an infinite-dimensional field indexed within a finite-dimensional metric space given only a finite collection of noisy observational data. Bayesian inference offers an increasingly-popular strategy to overcome the inherent ill-posedness of this signal reconstruction challenge. However, there remains a great deal of confusion within the astronomical community regarding the appropriate mathematical devices for framing such analyses and the diversity of available computational procedures for recovering posterior functionals. In this brief research note I will attempt to clarify both these issues from an “applied statistics” perpective, with insights garnered from my post-astronomy experiences as a computational Bayesian / epidemiological geostatistician.

The past 20 years have seen remarkable advances in spectropolarimetric instrumentation that have allowed us, for the first time, to identify some magnetic stars in most major stages of stellar evolution. We are beginning to see the broad outline of how such fields change during stellar evolution, to confront theoretical hypotheses and models of magnetic field structure and evolution with detailed data, and to understand more of the ways in which the presence of a field in turn affects stellar structure and evolution.

I present examples of radio AGN with binary nuclei which provide the direct radio evidence for binary Super Massive Black Holes (SMBH) driving the AGN activity. There is also other evidence for distorted radio morphology and periodic variability which may indicate the presence of a second (inactive) SMBH. Finally I enumerate a number of possible radio tracers for the binary SMBH merger events.

Beginning with the enigmatic (and now emblematic) TW Hya, the scutiny of individual stars and star-disk systems has both motivated and benefitted from the identification of nearby young moving groups (NYMGs). I briefly outline the emergence of this relatively new subfield of astronomy over the past two decades, and offer a few examples illustrating how the study of NYMGs and their members enables unique investigations of pre-main sequence stellar evolution, evolved protoplanetary disks, and young exoplanets.

The President of the IAU, Prof. Robert Williams, welcomed the delegates and members to this first business session of the General Assembly. The President invited the General Secretary, Dr. Ian Corbett, to start the business session.

Since mid-2007 we have carried out a dedicated long-term monitoring programme at 15 GHz using the Owens Valley Radio Observatory 40 meter telescope (OVRO 40m). One of the main goals of this programme is to study the relation between the radio and gamma-ray emission in blazars and to use it as a tool to locate the site of high energy emission. Using this large sample of objects we are able to characterize the radio variability, and study the significance of correlations between the radio and gamma-ray bands. We find that the radio variability of many sources can be described using a simple power law power spectral density, and that when taking into account the red-noise characteristics of the light curves, cases with significant correlation are rare. We note that while significant correlations are found in few individual objects, radio variations are most often delayed with respect to the gamma-ray variations. This suggests that the gamma-ray emission originates upstream of the radio emission. Because strong flares in most known gamma-ray-loud blazars are infrequent, longer light curves are required to settle the issue of the strength of radio-gamma cross-correlations and establish confidently possible delays between the two. For this reason continuous multiwavelength monitoring over a longer time period is essential for statistical tests of jet emission models.

The nearest, youngest groups of stars to the Sun provide important samples of age-dated stars for studying circumstellar disk evolution, imaged exoplanets, and brown dwarfs. I briefly comment on the status of the known stellar groups within 100 pc: β Pic, AB Dor, UMa, Car-Near, Tuc-Hor and β Tuc nucleus, Hyades, Col, TW Hya, Car, Coma Ber, 32 Ori, η Cha, and χ1 For. I also discuss some poorly characterized groups and “non-groups.” Grades for 2015 of Pass, Satisfactory, or Fail are assigned to the groups for the purposes of age-dating stars and brown dwarfs. I speculate that Tuc-Hor could have provided a supernova ~60 pc away ~2.2 Myr ago which showered the Earth with traces of 60Fe-bearing dust.

The incoming IAU President, Norio Kaifu, welcomed the participants to the Closing Ceremony of the XXVIIIth General Assembly.

Recent studies of the nearest star-forming clouds of the Galaxy at submillimeter wavelengths with the Herschel Space Observatory have provided us with unprecedented images of the initial conditions and early phases of the star formation process. The Herschel images reveal an intricate network of filamentary structure in every interstellar cloud. These filaments all exhibit remarkably similar widths - about a tenth of a parsec - but only the densest ones contain prestellar cores, the seeds of future stars. The Herschel results favor a scenario in which interstellar filaments and prestellar cores represent two key steps in the star formation process: first turbulence stirs up the gas, giving rise to a universal web-like structure in the interstellar medium, then gravity takes over and controls the further fragmentation of filaments into prestellar cores and ultimately protostars. This scenario provides new insight into the inefficiency of star formation, the origin of stellar masses, and the global rate of star formation in galaxies. Despite an apparent complexity, global star formation may be governed by relatively simple universal laws from filament to galactic scales.

I review our understanding of classic dynamical scaling relations, relating luminosity, size and kinematics of early-type galaxies. Using unbiased determinations of galaxy mass profiles from stellar dynamical models, a simple picture has emerged in which scaling relations are driven by virial equilibrium, accompanied by a trend in the stellar mass-to-light ratio (M/L). This picture confirms the earliest insights. The trend is mainly due to the combined variation of age, metallicity and the stellar initial mass function (IMF). The systematic variations best correlate with the galaxy velocity dispersion, which traces the bulge mass fraction. This indicates a link between bulge growth and quenching of star formation. Dark matter is unimportant within the half-light radius, where the total mass profile is close to isothermal (ρ ∝ r−2).

In this paper we present the results of our new classification of asteroid families, upgraded by using catalog with > 500,000 asteroids. We discuss the outcome of the most recent update of the family list and of their membership. We found enough evidence to perform 9 mergers of the previously independent families. By introducing an improved method of estimation of the expected family growth in the less populous regions (e.g. at high inclination) we were able to reliably decide on rejection of one tiny group as a probable statistical fluke. Thus we reduced our current list to 115 families. We also present newly determined ages for 6 families, including complex 135 and 221, improving also our understanding of the dynamical vs. collisional families relationship. We conclude with some recommendations for the future work and for the family name problem.

The quiet Sun observed in polarized light exhibits a rich and complex magnetic structuring which is still not fully resolved nor understood. The present work is intended to contribute to the debate about the origin of the quiet sun magnetic fields, in relation or not to the global solar dynamo. We present analysis of center-to-limb polarization measurements obtained with the SOT/SP spectropolarimeter onboard the Hinode satellite outside active regions, in 2007 and 2013, i.e. at a minimum and a maximum of the solar cycle, respectively. We compare the spatial fluctuation Fourier spectra of unsigned circular and linear polarization images after corrections for polarization bias and focus variations between the two data sets. The decay of active regions is clearly a source of magnetic fields in the quiet Sun. It leads to a global increase of the polarization fluctuation power spectrum in 2013 in the network. In the internetwork, we observe no variation of the polarization fluctuation power at mesogranular and granular scales, whereas it increases at sub-granular scales. We interpret these results in the following way. At the mesogranular and granular scales very efficient mechanisms of magnetic field removal are operating in the internetwork, that leads to a dissipation or a concentration of magnetic fields on smaller scales. So the cycle-invariant magnetic signal that we detect at mesogranular and granular scales must be continuously created by a dynamo mechanism which is independent of the solar cycle.

We present an analysis of the optical nuclear spectra from the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in a sample of giant low surface brightness (GLSB) galaxies. GLSB galaxies are extreme late type spirals that are large, isolated and poorly evolved compared to regular spiral galaxies. Earlier studies have indicated that their nuclei have relatively low mass black holes. Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we selected a sample of 30 GLSB galaxies that showed broad Hα emission lines in their AGN spectra. In some galaxies such as UGC 6284, the broad component of Hα is more related to outflows rather than the black hole. One galaxy (UGC 6614) showed two broad components in Hα, one associated with the black hole and the other associated with an outflow event. We derived the nuclear black hole (BH) masses of 29 galaxies from their broad Hα parameters. We find that the nuclear BH masses lie in the range 105 – 107 M⊙. The bulge stellar velocity dispersion σe was determined from the underlying stellar spectra. We compared our results with the existing BH mass - velocity dispersion (MBH–σe) correlations and found that the majority of our sample lie in the low BH mass regime and below the MBH–σe correlation. The effects of galaxy orientation in the measurement of σe and the increase of σe due to the effects of bar are probable reasons for the observed offset for some galaxies, but in many galaxies the offset is real. A possible explanation for the MBH–σe offset could be lack of mergers and accretion events in the history of these galaxies which leads to a lack of BH-bulge co-evolution.

We studied the γ-ray variability of 13 blazars observed with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). These blazars were among the brightest ones monitored during the first 4 years of the Fermi sky survey. We modelled their γ-ray light curves with the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process or mixed OU process. The power spectral density (PSD) of the OU process is a zero-centered Lorentzian function, proportional to 1/fα with α changing at a characteristic time scale, τ0, from 0 (τ ≫ τ0) to 2 (τ ≪ τ0). The PSD of the mixed OU process has in addition an intermediate part with 0 < α < 2 between the long and short characteristic time scales. We show that the OU model provides a good description of the Fermi/LAT light curves of three blazars in our sample. For the first time we provide constraints on the characteristic γ-ray time scale of variability in two BL Lac sources, 3C 66A and PKS 2155-304. We find that the mixed OU process describes the light curves of the remaining 10 blazars better than the OU process. We infer that their Fermi/LAT PSD resemble power-law functions and constrain their PSD slopes.

We present a method to map multivariate non-Gaussian posterior probability densities into Gaussian ones via nonlinear Box-Cox transformations, and generalizations thereof. This is analogous to the search for normal parameters in the CMB, but can in principle be applied to any probability density that is continuous and unimodal. The search for the optimally Gaussianizing transformation amongst the Box-Cox family is performed via a maximum likelihood formalism. We can judge the quality of the found transformation a posteriori: qualitatively via statistical tests of Gaussianity, and more illustratively by how well it reproduces the credible regions. The method permits an analytical reconstruction of the posterior from a sample, e.g. a Markov chain, and simplifies the subsequent joint analysis with other experiments. Furthermore, it permits the characterization of a non-Gaussian posterior in a compact and efficient way. The expression for the non-Gaussian posterior can be employed to find analytic formulae for the Bayesian evidence, and consequently be used for model comparison.

In March 2013, the Sydney–AAO Multi-object Integral field spectrograph (SAMI) began a major survey of 3400 galaxies at the AAT, the largest of its kind to date. At the time of writing, over a third of the targets have been observed and the scientific impact has been immediate. The Manga galaxy survey has now started at the SDSS telescope and will target an even larger sample of nearby galaxies. In Australia, the community is now gearing up to deliver a major new facility called Hector that will allow integral field spectroscopy of 100 galaxies observed simultaneously. By the close of the decade, it will be possible to obtain integral field spectroscopy of 100,000 galaxies over 3000 square degrees of sky down to r=17 (median). Many of these objects will have HI imaging from the new ASKAP radio surveys. We discuss the motivation for such a survey and the use of new cosmological simulations that are properly matched to the integral field observations. The Hector survey will open up a new and unique parameter space for galaxy evolution studies.