Giant molecular clouds tend to join together in a larger structure called molecular cloud complex (MCC). In one way, MCC has an important role in linking the physical properties of Milky Way structures to those of other galaxies. In another way, it serves as the nest of massive star formation event. In this talk, I will discuss recent results from high-angular resolution and high sensitivity observations of Galactic MCCs in both of aspects of connecting to other galaxies and to massive star formation. The framework of connecting to other galaxies is based on the mutual scaling relations between mass, size, velocity dispersion and star formation rate. Whereas, for massive star formation, it is based on the influence of the large scale structure on star formation.

Discovery of billion solar mass quasars at high redshift poses a challenge for modeling the initial seed black hole formation and subsequent growth history. Thus, radiation-hydrodynamic simulation for estimating growth rate of seed black holes in the range 10^2-10^5 solar mass is critical to test suggested scenarios. In this talk, I will discuss how gas accretion onto black holes is regulated by radiative feedback emphasizing the role of thermal and radiation pressure. Given the difficulty of seed black hole growth due to radiative feedback, I will present our most recent work where we show that stellar bulge component can enhance the gas accretion onto black holes when the bulge exceeds the critical mass of ~10^6 solar mass. Our results imply that heavy seed black holes (> 10^5 solar mass) that may form via direct collapse can grow efficiently coupling to the host galaxies whereas light seeds (< 10^2 solar mass) are not able to grow coevally with the host galaxies due to radiative feedback. I will also present Bondi-Hoyle type simulations with radiative feedback to show how dramatically radiative feedback changes the classical understanding of accretion onto black holes in supersonic motion.

Most of the observable matter in the Universe is in the plasma state and there must be a wide range of research topics in plasma astrophysics. Nonetheless plasma astrophysics had remained as relatively a small and less focused branch of astronomy. Only recently a variety of research opportunities in plasma astrophysics are opening up, as will be introduced in this talk. Let me with a brief review of on-going efforts to build facilities for experimental plasma astrophysics in the United States and with phase diagrams for magnetic reconnection in astrophysical systems. In the main part I will discuss specific fundamental issues such as (i) efficiency of magnetic reconnection, (ii) onset of instability, (iii) cross-scale coupling and (iv) particle acceleration, as far as time permits. For each topic, selective results of laboratory experiments will be shown first and then followed by those of solar observations where complex magnetic structure is visible in detail. This presentation is based on workshops on plasma astrophysics held in Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and solar research carried out in New Jersey Institute of Technology.

The gravitational waves were detected directly for the first time on September 14 at 18:51 (Korean Standard Time) by twin LIGO detectors located at Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington nearly simultaneously. This signal was initially noticed by the detection software within 3 minutes of the arrival, but final confirmation was made only after long and careful investigation of the noise characteristics, shape of the signal and possible influence of the environment.  We finally concluded that the detected waves were produced during the last fraction of second of the inspiral and merger of a binary system composed of two black holes of about 39 and 26 Msun each, located at about 1.3 billion light years. During this process, huge amount of energy corresponding to approximately 3 Msun in the form of gravitational waves has been radiated away, leaving a single black hole of about 62 solar mass behind. In this talk, I will briefly describe the nature of the nature of gravitational waves, the principle of the LIGO detectors and their sensitivities, and how actual detection was made. Then I will close my talk by commenting on the prospect of the gravitational wave astronomy brought by this detection.

After 25 years of intensive efforts, microlensing is beginning to gain international recognition as a powerful method to probe planetary demographics. Due to the vision of Cheongho Han more than a decade ago, the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network has completed its commissioning year just at this moment. I explain how KMTNet is the first variability survey specifically optimized for microlensing. I discuss the power of the microlensing technique by its concrete accomplishments, and then discuss the KMTNet strategy to build on these accomplishments over the next five years. Finally, I discuss why KMTNet is the best complement to space-based microlensing studies, both present and future.

Abstract: Clumpiness of intergalactic medium in sub-Mpc scales can boost the recombination rate significantly, thereby affecting the growth of HII bubbles during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). In this study, we use high-resolution hydrodynamic simulation with radiative-transfer to assess clumpiness of ionized gas in sub-Mpc scales to provide a sub-grid preion for unresolved clumping factor for large-scale EoR simulations. Compared to previous studies, we extend the mass resolution well below 10^8 M_sun to take into account the structures that can form in pre-ionized medium with T<10^4 K. During a few megayear after the volume is exposed to the radiation, ionization fronts sweep across low density gas super-sonically until they are trapped on surfaces of minihalos. Small-scale density structures during this time lead to a large (C>10) clumping factor for ionized gas and hugely boosts the recombination rate until they are mostly disrupted by hydrodynamic feedback after ~10 Myr. When our sample volume gets ionized at z_i with a blackbody radiation with the intensity J_21, the integrated recombination from the structures is N^add_rec = 0.32* (J_21)^0.12 [(1+z_i)/11]^-1.7 per H atom on top of what is expected from homogenous distribution of the gas. In models that most the volume ionized near the end of reionization, this can add significantly (N^add_rec ~> 0.5) to the ionizing photon budget to achieve the reionization.

Most young, low-mass stars are surrounded by accretion disks. The increasing number of planets detected around main-sequence stars strongly suggests that planets will form in many, if not all, disks. A broad goal is to connect the properties and evolution of disks with the formation and diversity of planetary systems. Millimeter-wavelength interferometric observations play a central role in these studies by probing the bulk of the gas and dust in disks. In this talk, I present recent results to measure the structure, grain growth, and temporal evolution of disks with an emphasis on ALMA, CARMA, and VLA observations. I will also highlight future directions with ALMA.

유럽연합은 유럽의 글로벌 경쟁력 확보를 목표로 Innovation Union 및 Europe 2020 주요 계획(Flagship Initiative)을 실현하기 위한 연구지원 프로그램(Horizon2020 )을 운영하고 있다. Horizon2020 은 2014년부터 2020년까지 총 7년동안 약 800억유로 (약 110조원)를 투자하는 세계 최대 연구지원 프로그램으로, 역내 금융 위기를 극복하고 일자리를 창출해 지속적인 경제성장을 도모하면서 유럽이 직면한 사회적 현안을 해결하고, 지속적인 성장을 도모한다. 크게 세가지 주요 사업(과학의 우수성, 산업 리더쉽, 사회적 난제)으로 구성되어 있으며, 특히 국제협력 확대, 산업계의 참여 도모, 참여자 중심의 프로그램 운영 등의 특징을 가지고 있다. 유럽집행위원회(European Commission)는 매 2년마다 중점 추진사업별 국제공동연구, 인력교류 및 산업혁신 관련 공고를 발표하고 있으며, 2016-2017년도 Horizon2020 SPACE 분야는 크게 여섯가지 영역으로 구분, 지원된다. (1) Satellite Navigation (Galileo & EGNOS applications and infrastructure), (2) Earth Observation (Earth Observation applications and services), (3) Competitiveness of the European Space sector, (4) Space Surveillance and Tracking support framework, (5) SME Instrument and Fast Track to Innovation, (6) Other Action 한국측 연구자는 EU Horizon2020 대부분의 과제에 참여할 수 있으나, EU 에서 별도의 연구 예산을 지원하지 않는다. 따라서 미래부와 산업부에서는 Horizon2020 과제에 참여가 확정된 한국측 연구자에게 별도의 매칭펀드를 제공하고 있다. (인력교류 과제 연간 50백만원 내외, 공동연구 과제 연간 150~500백만원 내외)

I will talk about astrophysical compact objects g on various properties of neutron stars. A neutron star (NS) is a remnant of stellar collapse (supernova) and is supported against gravity by neutron degeneracy pressure predicted by Pauli's exclusion principle. Since the first discovery in 1967, many more NSs are discovered, and our understanding of theoretical/observational properties of NSs have improved significantly, yet there are still a lot of issues to address. In this talk, I will review fundamental physics in NSs and recent progress in observational and theoretical works.

BOMBOLO is a new multi-band visitor instrument for the SOAR 4m Telescope. It is a three-arm imager covering the near-UV and optical wavelengths through an optimized set of broad and narrow band filters. The three arms work simultaneously and independently, providing synchronized imaging capability for a variety of astronomical events. BOMBOLO is an exemplary case of science exploration feeding technology development in Chile. The instrument is at the Conceptual Design stage, having been approved by the SOAR Board of Directors as a visitor instrument in 2012 and having been granted full funding from CONICYT, the Chilean State Agency of Research, in 2013. The Design Phase has begun and will be completed in the early 2016, followed by a construction phase in 2016, with expected Commissioning in 2017.

The S-class MESSIER satellite has been designed to explore the extremely low surface brightness universe at UV and optical wavelengths. The two driving science cases target the mildly- and highly non-linear regimes of structure formation to test two key predictions of the LCDM scenario: (1) the detection of the putative large number of galaxy satellites, and (2) the identification of the filaments of the cosmic web. The satellite will drift scan the entire sky in 8 bands covering the 200-900 nm range to reach the unprecedented surface brightness levels of 33 mag/arcsec$^2$ in the optical and 37 mag/arcsec$^2$ in the UV. Many important science cases will result as free by-products and will be discussed in some detail, such as the luminosity function of galaxies, the contribution and role of intracluster light, the cosmological background radiation at UV and optical wavelengths, the warm molecular hydrogen content of galaxies at z=0.25, the chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium through mass loss of red giant stars and the accurate measure of the BAO scale at z=0.7. It will provide the first space-based reference UV-optical photometric catalogue of the entire sky, and synergies with GAIA and EUCLID will also be discussed.

We present a CMB map reconstructed from both WMAP and Planck datasets. Using recent statistical tools based on sparsity, we show that the Galactic barrier can be broken down, so that we can have a full sky high quality CMB map, for the first time. In addition, as a result of our novel approach, this high quality map is free of any significant thermal Sunyaev-Zel’Dovich effect contamination. Then, we revisit the different large-scale CMB anomalies considered as violations of its statistical isotropy or Gaussianity. Finally, we present a reconstruction of the primordial power spectrum from Planck data.

Formation and evolution of low HI mass galaxies are affected by environment and by the photoionisation feedback from the UV background after end of reionization. We study the physical processes of low HI mass galaxy formation which are imprinted on the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the Universe using the hierarchical galaxy formation model, GALFORM. We calculate the sensitivity of correlation functions to the HI mass threshold at redshifts $0 \le z \le 0.5$. Parameterizing clustering as $\xi(z)=(r/r_{0})^{-\gamma}$, we find that low HI mass galaxies increase the clustering amplitude $r_{0}$ and slope $\gamma$ in HI selected galaxy samples. This is opposite to expectations from optical galaxy surveys. We show the HI mass function for different host dark matter halo masses and types (central or satellite) to interpret the clustering of HI galaxies. We also show the contribution of low HI mass galaxies to 21cm intensity mapping. We find that semi-analytic modelling of intensity mapping requires a dark matter halo mass resolution of $<$10$^{10}{\rm h}^{-1}$M$_{\odot}$ in order to correctly predict 21cm brightness temperature fluctuations.

Understanding the cosmic growth of supermassive black hole (BH) population and coevolution with their host galaxies is now one of the essential ingredients for a complete picture of galaxy formation and evolution. This talk will show you the results of the related two observational research projects. (1) To directly map the BH-galaxy coevolution, we investigate the cosmic evolution of the BH mass-bulge luminosity scaling relationship using a sample of 52 AGNs at z~0.36 and z~0.57. By employing multi-component spectral and structural decomposition methods to the obtained high-quality Keck spectra and high-resolution HST images, BH masses and bulge luminosities are measured uniformly and consistently. Using Monte Carlo simulations to take into account selection effects, we find the observational evidence that BH growth precedes that of the host galaxies. This indicates that black holes grow first and then the host galaxies follow up in the framework of the BH-galaxy coevolution. (2) To probe the high-redshift BH population and scaling relations, measuring BH masses accurately is the first crucial step. The rest-frame UV CIV broad emission line is usually used for BH mass estimates in high-redshift AGNs (i.e.2

The South Pole Telescope survey of 2500 deg^2 in the southern sky has enabled the selection of a large sample of massive galaxy clusters extending to z~1.5 through their Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. Dark Energy Survey deep, optical multiband imaging is enabling studies of the galaxy populations within those clusters and constraints on the masses of the systems through weak lensing. Analyses of the population of SZE selected clusters from SPT indicates cosmological constraints that are in good agreement with other cosmological probes and that together with other probes provide among the most precise constraints yet on the growth rate of cosmic structure and the equation of state of the dark energy. Improved mass constraints from weak lensing and new cluster finding experiments in the X-ray through eROSITA promise to open the window on new studies of cosmology and structure evolution.

Neutrinos are surely the most enigmatic fundamental particles in Nature. Wolfgang Pauli postulated the neutrino as an undetectable particle, however nowadays neutrinos can be detected routinely thanks to very large advanced detectors. Many of the developments in the neutrino field were triggered by the pioneering experiment of Ray Davis observing too few neutrinos from the Sun compared to expectations. Surprisingly the solar neutrino problem was caused by our incomplete understanding of the particle physics. The solution was: Neutrinos have mass and oscillate, changing from one flavor to another. It was for these findings that the Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 was awarded to Takaaki Kajita (from Super-Kamiokande Experiment) and Arthur B. McDonald (from SNO Experiment). Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaborations. The talk will retrace the history of the neutrino and discoveries in the neutrino field. A particular focus will be on the discovery of neutrino oscillations. Future efforts in neutrino oscillation physics and neutrino astronomy will be discussed and their potential for more discoveries evaluated.

Gaia is an ESA satellite project launched at Dec. 2013. It will map our Galaxy in 3D by measuring six astrometric parameters (i.e. two positions, two proper motions, parallax, and radial velocity) of one billion stars over the whole sky. Astrometric accuracy of Gaia for G type star is 5-16 μas for bright stars, 24 μas at V = 15 mag and 540 μas at V = 20 mag, which is the highest accuracy that has ever been achieved. Gaia simultaneously obtains low-resolution spectrum of each star using Blue and Red Photometer (BP and RP: 330-680nm and 640-1000nm, respectively). By the nature of Gaia, it will produce enormous amount of complex data. Analyzing Gaia data is thus a challenging and huge task requiring big-data experts and dedicated computing powers as well. In this talk, I will give an overview of the Gaia mission and efforts for Gaia data analysis in DPAC (Data Processing and Analysis Consortium).

The early phases of supernovae (SNe) reveal very important characteristics of their stellar progenitors and their explosion mechanisms. On the one hand, the shock breakout, which is the first electromagnetic signature occuring when the shock emerges at the surface, carries key information on the structure of the exploding star. Secondly, for core-collapse SNe the rise behaviour is directly related to the properties of the collapsing star while for thermonuclear SNe the unknown companion of the exploding white dwarf can leave an imprint in the first hours to days of the light-curve. We present past and current results of early light-curve studies of different SN types and lay out the exciting landscape that the new high-cadence surveys like the KMTNet Supernova Project (KSP) and the High-cadence Transient Survey (HiTS) will bring along.

Brown dwarfs are the objects that bridge the realms of stars and planets, making them important benchmarks for testing star and planet formation theories. In particular, studies of brown dwarfs at young ages are crucial for understanding the mass dependence in the formation and early evolution of stars. Star forming regions and young clusters harbour large populations of these substellar objects, including some with masses comparable to those of giant planets. Our deep survey SONYC (Substellar Objects in Nearby Young Clusters) was designed to provide a census of the substellar population in nearby star forming regions, and characterize their Initial Mass Functions down to unprecedented masses below 10 MJup. In this talk I will present the current status of the studies of the low-mass IMF, discuss the effects of environment, and outline the impact on our understanding of star formation.

Galaxies are the end product of the hierarchical universe. Understanding them thus requires reliable physics on all scales, from individual stellar populations to structure formation. As an ab-initio approach, semi-analytic models (SAMs) for galaxy formation and evolution are widely used to investigate galaxy properties. In this talk, I will give a brief introduction of a new SAM, ySAM, which has been developed by utilising halo merger trees extracted from N-body simulations and up-to-date physical prescriptions. Since halo merger trees are the essential backbones of SAMs, the impact of different halo merger tree building algorithms on ySAM will be presented. Galaxy mergers and in-situ star formation are considered to be two main channels for galaxy mass growth. I will show the contribution of mergers to stellar mass assembly histories according to the wide range of halo and galaxy mass. Finally, I will briefly report some issues on galaxy chemical evolution in ySAM.

Materials exposed to the harsh space environment are altered over time in both physical and compositional properties. The general definition of space weathering simply refers to this alteration. There are multiple processes, however, that can and do alter materials on the surface of an airless body: comminution, melting, vaporization by energetic impacts; gardening of a particulate soil and mixing with local and foreign materials by repeated impacts; sputtering at the atomic/molecular scale by solar wind; crystal damaging by UV radiation and energetic particles; structural fatigue from diurnal thermal cycling; mobility or loss of volatile species by radiant heating and sublimation; etc. Thus, space weathering takes many forms and its alteration products are a direct function of a) location in the solar system, b) composition and texture of the surface, c) mass and magmatic evolution of the body, and d) length of time exposed. The regolith of only two extraterrestrial bodies has been directly sampled (The Moon and Itokawa). These samples and the ongoing detailed analyses in Earth-based laboratories provide a cornerstone for recognizing and understanding some aspects of space weathering effects. A handful of additional bodies have been visited by spacecraft and studied in detail for extended periods with remote sensors (Mercury, Eros, Vesta, and most recently the dwarf planet Ceres and comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko). Seven additional asteroids have been observed with instruments during a spacecraft flyby, while the satellites of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, have been studied to different degrees through multiple flybys. A few of the various forms of space weathering that are now recognized (or hypothesized) will be discussed and illustrated.

Prior to the year 2005, the number of known “classical” Milky Way (MW) dwarf satellite galaxies (?8 mag > Mv > ?18 mag) remained twelve. However from 2005 to the present, thanks to the high quality photometric data from extremely well designed systematic surveys such as Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; York et al. 2000) or Dark Energy Survey (DES; Abbot et al. 2005), the number of newly discovered faint dwarf satellites has dramatically increased: Now we have almost forty dwarf satellite galaxies in the halo of the Milky Way (e.g., 15 ultra-faint dwarfs from SDSS; 17 dwarf galaxy candidates from the first two-year data set of DES), and there might be more than tens of faint dwarf satellites still waiting to be discovered in the near future (Koposov et al. 2007; Tollerud et al. 2008). In this talk, I will give a quick guided tour on these near-field dwarf galaxy populations. For in-depth review, we will take a look at several specific case studies on the properties of dwarf satellite galaxies in the Local Group and nearby Sculptor filament. Finally I will close my talk by introducing the usage of “RR Lyrae variable stars” as a versatile probe to “old stellar halos” of nearby galaxies.

The World Space Observatory Ultraviolet (WSO-UV) is the space mission that will grant access to the UV range in the post Hubble epoch. WSO-UV is equipped with instrumentation for imaging and spectroscopy and it is fully devoted to UV astronomy. In this talk, we outline the WSO-UV mission model and present the current status of the project. Also, the NEO observing mission SODA (System of Observation of Day-time Asteroids) is also presented.

The ASIAA is leading an effort to deploy the 12m ALMA-NA prototype telescope to the Summit of Greenland. We have been retrofitting this telescope for operations at polar conditions, and we will ship the telescope to Thule in Greenland in 2016. The scientific target is to image the shadow of the supermassive black hole in the nucleus of the M87 galaxy. Although at a distance of 18Mpc, the M87 SMBH is almost as large in apparent size as the SgrA* SMBH in the Milky Way. The shadow is expected to be on the order of 40 micro arsec. By using the GLT as the northern station of a VLBI experiment which will include ALMA, the SMA, and the JCMT, we aim to achieve 20 micro arsec resolution at 350GHz. The GLT will be the first astronomical observatory in the Arctic region. In this talk, we will report on the current status of this project.

Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic explosions in the universe. We have already known the most distant GRBs at the redshift z=8.26 (spectroscopic) and z=9.4 (photometric), so we can use GRBs as the cosmological probing tool. However we could obtain little knowledge of physical conditions in the early universe from these high-z GRBs while their redshifts were measured. We hope to perform the high dispersion spectroscopy with the large area telescopes during the afterglows are still bright. Then we can challenge to reveal the reionization epoch and the origins, early metal enrichment, star formation history as well as to detect GRBs from first stars (population-III stars). Japanese GRB community has organized a working group of a future small satellite mission, named "HiZ-GUNDAM" (High-z Gamma-Ray Bursts for Unraveling the Dark Ages Mission), to pioneer the observation of early universe with high-z GRBs. This mission consists of two instruments, the X-ray imaging system with coded aperture mask and the optical/near infrared telescope with 30cm diameter. Once GRBs are detected and localized, HiZ-GUNDAM rapidly perform the follow-up observation like the Swift satellite, and determine the rough redshift with the photometric observation with the optical/NIR telescope. The onboard measurement of redshift and the redshift alert system will play an important role in leading the follow-up observation for the early afterglows by large area telescope. The X-ray imaging system continuously monitors a large field of view of ~1 steradian in the energy range of 1-20 keV with the effective area of 500-1,000 cm2. We are developing 1-dimensional silicon strip sensor with the size of 19.2mm x 16mm (~3 cm2), and which has 64ch strip-type electrode with the width of 0.3mm. We are also developing the 64ch specific ASICs which is modified version of ones developed by Prof. Takahashi and Prof. Ikeda group in ISAS/JAXA. According to the current simulations by T-SPICE electric circuit simulator, they have enough gain to readout the small charges from 1 keV X-ray photon, and we can integrate appropriate trigger system. Using the coded aperture mask with the same pitch of 0.3mm at the distance of 30cm from the detector plane, we can determine the position of GRBs with ~10 arcmin accuracy in geometrically and ~5 arcmin for bright GRBs. Since the high-z GRBs have low brightness with long time duration because of the cosmological time dilation, we will enhance so-called imaging trigger system. The optical/NIR telescope has the primary mirror with 30cm in diameter, and we consider the offset Gregorian optics to avoid the stray light from the sun and the earth. We will divide the optical ray of 0.5--1.7 um into 4 bands with dichroic mirror, and perform the photometric observations and select the candidates of high-z GRBs. A reflection baffle (aperture shade) in front of the telescope gives us the wide visibility larger than the field of view of X-ray imaging system. Therefore we effectively perform the follow-up observations for GRBs detected by the X-ray detector. In this talk, we introduce the concept of HiZ-GUNDAM mission and the developing/planning instrumentations.

Despite the fact that the APOGEE project is focused on the structure of the galaxy, it also offers a lot to explore for stellar astrophysicists. In this colloquium, I will talk about two projects which are using the dwarf M (dM) stars in APOGEE. The first project is searching for HW Vir type (subdwarf B (sdB) + dM / brown-dwarf) systems, which are believed to compose a high percentage of subdwarfs despite not proven yet. The aim is to look at the IR spectra of dM stars in order to find a trace of an sdB companion. The results would reveal the binarity nature of sdB stars and common-envelope evolution, and contribute to the theoretical and evolutionary studies of sdBs through dM stars. The second project is to to define a chromospheric activity indicator in IR region by using active and inactive dwarf M stars' spectra and determine candidates for a 'Chromospherically Active Cool Stars Survey'.

The planet crossing asteroids in the inner solar system have strongly chaotic orbits and the distributions of their angular elements are often regarded as uniform random. We quantified the level of intrinsic non-uniformities of the angular elements for the dynamical subgroups of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and Mars Crossing Objects (MCOs). Using the methods of angular statistics, we found several statistically significant departures from uniform random angular distributions. These non-uniform distributions of the angular elements may affect the asteroidal impact fluxes on the planets. We developed a new approach that accounts for the non-uniform angular elements of planet crossing asteroids to investigate the impact flux and its seasonal variation on the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. The impact flux of NEOs on the Earth-Moon system is found to be not affected significantly by the non-uniform distribution of angular elements of NEOs. The impact flux on Mars, however, is found to be reduced by a factor of about 2 compared to the flux that would obtain from the assumption of uniform random distributions of the angular elements of MCOs. Moreover, the impact flux on Mars has a strong seasonal variation, with a peak when the planet is near aphelion. We found that the amplitude of this seasonal variation is a factor of 4-5 times smaller compared to what would be obtained with a uniform random distribution of the angular elements of MCOs. We calculate that the aphelion impact flux on Mars is about three times larger than its perihelion impact flux.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is an intergovernmental astronomy organisation that provides state-of-the-art research facilities in Chile to astronomers in Europe and all over the world. Engineers, administrative staff, astronomers, scientists and many more, based in Chile and Germany, work together to keep ESO one of the world's most productive astronomical observatories. ESO astronomers are also very active in their own research fields, covering topics from exoplanets to high-redshift cosmology. I will give a brief introduction about the current activities of ESO and will highlight how ESO astronomers manage to combine their functional work with conducting forefront science. In the second part of my presentation, I will focus on my own scientific work. More than 16 years ago, so-called 'Ultra-Compact Dwarf galaxies' (UCDs) have been discovered in spectroscopic surveys of the Fornax galaxy cluster by our team. UCDs have a special place in the fundamental plane of pressure supported stellar systems. They are located at the high mass end of the globular cluster (GC) distribution, reaching ~10^8 M_sun and obey a mass-size relation unlike 'classical' GCs, but connecting to compact ellipticals. Nowadays, dozens, if not hundreds, of UCDs and their fellow `dwarf galaxy transition objects' (DGTOs), `giant globular clusters' (GGCs) and `extended clusters' (ECs) have been identified in various environments, filling the space in the fundamental plane between star clusters and dwarf galaxies. I will review the knowledge we obtained over the last 16 years of these sometimes still puzzling objects. I will present the occurence, spatial distribution, dynamics and mass spectrum of UCDs in different environments. For some of the bright UCDs, internal properties (metallicity, ages, [alpha/Fe] abundances, internal kinematics, clues to their IMF, etc.) are available, which I will highlight. Finally, I will summarize our current ideas about their formation and will conclude that the majority of UCDs belong to the 'star cluster family'.

Circumstellar disks of young stellar objects (YSOs) at a later stage are often called protoplanetary disks, as they are the natal place of protoplanets. In this talk, we present continuum observations at λ = 1.3 and 2.7 mm using the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy toward six protoplanetary disks in the Taurus molecular cloud: CI Tau, DL Tau, DO Tau, FT Tau, Haro 6-13, and HL Tau. We constrain physical properties of the disks with Bayesian inference using two disk models: the flared power-law disk model and flared accretion disk model. Comparing the physical properties, we find that the more extended disks are less flared and that the dust opacity spectral index (β) is smaller in the less massive disks. In addition, disks with a steeper mid-plane density gradient have a smaller β, which suggests that grains grow and radially move. We also discuss the possibilities of substructures on three extended protoplanetary disks. Furthermore, the HL Tau disk images taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are shown and discussed. If time is allowed, disk formation at earlier stages of YSOs would be addressed as well.

We have explored GALEX UV properties of optical red sequence galaxies in 4 rich Abell clusters at z ? 0.1. Inparticular we tried to find a hint of merger-induced recent star formation (RSF) in the red sequence galaxies. RSF fractions are calculated with various criteria for post-merger galaxies and normal red sequence galaxies based on their NUV - r’ colors. In this study it turned out that only 30% of the RSF red sequence galaxies involve tidally-disturbed features in cluster environment. It is possible that we are missing minor merger features with the deep optical images from the less massive regime (-21 < Mr' < -20) of our volume-limited sample. However, considering the timescale difference for the fading out of morphological merger features (~ 4 Gyr) and young stellar populations (~ 1 Gyr), the fraction of RSF red sequence galaxies without disturbed features is still significantly large. We also confirmed that those featureless RSF galaxies are mostly bulge-dominated. This result may imply that gas accretion in early-type galaxies plays a significant role in residual star formation of the early-type galaxies.