Noah Brosch

We present the results of a global coma morphology campaign for comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), which was organized to involve both professional and amateur observers. In response to the campaign, many hundreds of images, from nearly two dozen groups were collected. Images were taken primarily in the continuum, which help to characterize the behavior of dust in the coma of comet ISON. The campaign received images from January 12 through November 22, 2013 (an interval over which the heliocentric distance decreased from 5.1 AU to 0.35 AU), allowing monitoring of the long-term evolution of coma morphology during comet ISON's pre-perihelion leg. Data were contributed by observers spread around the world, resulting in particularly good temporal coverage during November when comet ISON was brightest but its visibility was limited from any one location due to the small solar elongation. We analyze the northwestern sunward continuum coma feature observed in comet ISON during the first half of 2013, finding that it was likely present from at least February through May and did not show variations on diurnal time scales. From these images we constrain the grain velocities to ~10 m s-1, and we find that the grains spent 2-4 weeks in the sunward side prior to merging with the dust tail. We present a rationale for the lack of continuum coma features from September until mid-November 2013, determining that if the feature from the first half of 2013 was present, it was likely too small to be clearly detected. We also analyze the continuum coma morphology observed subsequent to the November 12 outburst, and constrain the first appearance of new features in the continuum to later than November 13.99 UT.

... Germany M. Hoffmann, EH Geyer Pic do Midi Obs., France J. Lecacheux, B. Sicardy, C. Buil, F. Colas, A. Klotz, F. Thouvenot, JL Vidal Vatican Ohs., Italy E. Carreira, F. Rossi Catania Obs., Italy C. Blanco, S. Cristaldi Em Harod, Israel HJ Reitsema, Y. Nevo Wise Ohs. ...

With every new discovery of an extra-solar planet, the absence of planets in globular clusters (GCs) becomes
more and more conspicuous. Null detection of transiting hot Jupiters in globular clusters 47 Tuc,
omega Cen and NGC6397 presents an important puzzle, raising questions about the role played by cluster
metallicity and environment on formation and survival of planetary systems in densely populated stellar clusters.
GCs were postulated to have many free-floating planets, for which the microlensing (ML) is an established
tool for detection. Dense environment, well-constrained distances and kinematics of lenses and sources, and
photometry of thousands of stars simultaneously make GCs the ideal targets to search for the microlensing.
We present first results of a multi-site, 69-nights long campaign to search for ML signatures of
low-mass objects in the globular cluster M4, which was chosen due to its proximity, location and an actual existence
of a planet. M4 was observed in R and I bands by two telescopes, 1-m T40 and 18-inch C18, of WISE Observatory,
Tel Aviv, Israel, from April to July 2011. Observations on 1-m telescope were carried out in service mode, gathering
6 to 18 20-sec exposures a night for a total of 69 nights. C18 observations were done for about 4 hrs a night for 7
nights in May 2011. We employ the semi-automated pipeline to calibrate and reduce the images to the light curves
that our group is developing for this purpose which includes the differential photometry package DIAPL, 
written by Wozniak and modified by W. Pych. Several different diagnostics are employed for search of variability/transients.
While no high-significance ML event was found in this observational run, we have detected more than twenty new variables
and variable candidates in M4 field, which we present here.

ABSTRACT Space astronomy in the last 40 years has largely been done from spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) for which the technology is proven and delivery mechanisms are readily available. However, new opportunities are arising with the surge in commercial aerospace missions. We describe here one such possibility: deploying a small instrument on the Moon. This can be accomplished by flying onboard the Indian entry to the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition, Team Indus mission, which is expected to deliver a nearly 30 kgs of payloads to the Moon, with a rover as its primary payload. We propose to mount a wide-field far-UV (130–180 nm) imaging telescope as a payload on the Team Indus lander. Our baseline operation is a fixed zenith pointing but with the option of a mechanism to allow observations of different attitudes. Pointing towards intermediate ecliptic latitude (50∘ or above) ensures that the Sun is at least 40∘ off the line of sight at all times. In this position, the telescope can cover higher galactic latitudes as well as parts of Galactic plane. The scientific objectives of such a prospective are delineated and discussed.

The time domain is under-exploited in an astrophysical context, because the large photographic plate collections are almost never consulted by young astronomers. This is a result of lack of education of the more recent generations of astronomers, and of the deluge of terabyte-size datasets produced by new observations. Yet astronomical plates represent a unique set of resources and their quality does NOT improve with time. We point out valuable scientific projects that can be conducted with archival images and describe a first step to realize this at the Uccle Observatory, in Belgium.

The Arecibo Galaxy Environment Survey (AGES) is one of several H I surveys utilizing the new Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA) fitted to the 305-m radio telescope at Arecibo. a The survey is specifically designed to investigate various galactic environments to higher sensitivity, higher velocity resolution and higher spatial resolution than previous fully sampled, 21-cm multibeam surveys. The emphasis is on making detailed observations of nearby objects although the large system bandwidth (100 MHz) will allow us to quantify the H I properties over a large instantaneous velocity range. In this paper, we describe the survey and its goals and present the results from the precursor observations of a 5 × 1-deg 2 region containing the nearby (∼10 Mpc) NGC 628 group. We have detected all the group galaxies in the region including the low-mass (M HI ∼10 7 M ⊙) dwarf, dw0137+1541. The fluxes and velocities for these galaxies compare well with previously published data. There is no intragroup neutral gas detected down to a limiting column density of 2 × 10 18 cm −2. In addition to the group galaxies we have detected 22 galaxies beyond the NGC 628 group, nine of which are previously uncatalogued. We present the H I data for these objects and also SuperCOSMOS images for possible optical galaxies that might be associated with the H I signal. We have used V/V max analysis to model how many galaxies beyond 1000 km s −1 should be detected and compare this with our results. The predicted number of detectable galaxies varies depending on the H I mass function (HIMF) used in the analysis. Unfortunately the precursor survey area is too small to determine whether this is saying anything fundamental about the HIMF or simply highlighting the effect of low number statistics. This is just one of many questions that will be addressed by the complete AGES survey.