We have conducted a kinematic study of 165 young M dwarfs with ages of less than or similar to 300 Myr. Our sample is composed of stars and brown dwarfs with spectral types ranging from K7 to L0, detected by ROSAT and with photometric distances of less than or similar to 25 pc assuming that the stars are single and on the main sequence. In order to find stars kinematically linked to known young moving groups (YMGs), we measured radial velocities for the complete sample with Keck and CFHT optical spectroscopy and trigonometric parallaxes for 75 of the M dwarfs with the CAPSCam instrument on the du Pont 2.5 m Telescope. Due to their youthful overluminosity and unresolved binarity, the original photometric distances for our sample underestimated the distances by 70% on average, excluding two extremely young (less than or similar to 3 Myr) objects found to have distances beyond a few hundred parsecs. We searched for kinematic matches to 14 reported YMGs and identified 10 new members of the AB Dor YMG and 2 of the Ursa Majoris group. Additional possible candidates include six Castor, four Ursa Majoris, two AB Dor members, and one member each of the Her-Lyr and beta Pic groups. Our sample also contains 27 young low-mass stars and 4 brown dwarfs with ages less than or similar to 150 Myr that are not associated with any known YMG. We identified an additional 15 stars that are kinematic matches to one of the YMGs, but the ages from spectroscopic diagnostics and/or the positions on the sky do not match. These warn against grouping stars together based only on kinematics and that a confluence of evidence is required to claim that a group of stars originated from the same star-forming event.

This paper provides a performance evaluation and investigation of the astrophysics code FLASH for a variety of Intel multiprocessors. This work was performed at the NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) on behalf of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) as a study preliminary to the acquisition of a high-performance computing (HPC) system at the CIW and for the NCCS itself to measure the relative performance of a recently acquired Intel Nehalem-based system against previously installed multicore HPC resources. A brief overview of computer performance evaluation is provided, followed by a description of the systems under test, a description of the FLASH test problem, and the test results. Additionally, the paper characterizes some of the effects of load imbalance imposed by adaptive mesh refinement. Copyright (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Through the laboratory study of ancient solar system materials such as meteorites and comet dust, we can recognize evidence for the same star-formation processes in our own solar system as those that we can observe now through telescopes in nearby star-forming regions. High temperature grains formed in the innermost region of the solar system ended up much farther out in the solar system, not only the asteroid belt but even in the comet accretion region, suggesting a huge and efficient process of mass transport. Bi-polar outflows, turbulent diffusion, and marginal gravitational instability are the likely mechanisms for this transport. The presence of short-lived radionuclides in the early solar system, especially Fe-60, Al-26, and Ca-41, requires a nearby supernova shortly before our solar system was formed, suggesting that the Sun was formed in a massive star-forming region similar to Orion or Carina. Solar system formation may have been "triggered" by ionizing radiation originating from massive O and B stars at the center of an expanding HII bubble, one of which may have later provided the supernova source for the short-lived radionuclides. Alternatively, a supernova shock wave may have simultaneously triggered the collapse and injected the short-lived radionuclides. Because the Sun formed in a region where many other stars were forming more or less contemporaneously, the bi-polar outflows from all such stars enriched the local region in interstellar silicate and oxide dust. This may explain several observed anomalies in the meteorite record: a near absence of detectable (no extreme isotopic properties) presolar silicate grains and a dichotomy in the isotope record between Al-26 and nucleosynthetic (nonradiogenic) anomalies.

From common proper motion and signatures of youth, researchers have identified about 30 members of a putative TW Hydrae Association. Only four of these had parallactic distances from Hipparcos. We have measured parallaxes and proper motions for 14 primary members. We combine these with literature values of radial velocities to show that the Galactic space motions of the stars, with the exception of TWA 9 and 22, are parallel and do not indicate convergence at a common formation point sometime in the last few million years. The space motions of TWA 9 and 22 do not agree with the others and indicate that they are not TWA members. The median parallax is 18 mas or 56 pc. We further analyze the stars' absolute magnitudes on pre-main-sequence evolutionary tracks and find a range of ages with a median of 10.1 Myr and no correlation between age and Galactic location. The TWA stars may have formed from an extended and filamentary molecular cloud but are not necessarily precisely coeval.

New transiting planet candidates are identified in 16 months (2009 May-2010 September) of data from the Kepler spacecraft. Nearly 5000 periodic transit-like signals are vetted against astrophysical and instrumental false positives yielding 1108 viable new planet candidates, bringing the total count up to over 2300. Improved vetting metrics are employed, contributing to higher catalog reliability. Most notable is the noise-weighted robust averaging of multiquarter photo-center offsets derived from difference image analysis that identifies likely background eclipsing binaries. Twenty-two months of photometry are used for the purpose of characterizing each of the candidates. Ephemerides (transit epoch, T-0, and orbital period, P) are tabulated as well as the products of light curve modeling: reduced radius (R-P / R-star), reduced semimajor axis (d / R-star), and impact parameter (b). The largest fractional increases are seen for the smallest planet candidates (201% for candidates smaller than 2R(circle plus). compared to 53% for candidates larger than 2R.) and those at longer orbital periods (124% for candidates outside of 50 day orbits versus 86% for candidates inside of 50 day orbits). The gains are larger than expected from increasing the observing window from 13 months (Quarters 1-5) to 16 months (Quarters 1-6) even in regions of parameter space where one would have expected the previous catalogs to be complete. Analyses of planet frequencies based on previous catalogs will be affected by such incompleteness. The fraction of all planet candidate host stars with multiple candidates has grown from 17% to 20%, and the paucity of short-period giant planets in multiple systems is still evident. The progression toward smaller planets at longer orbital periods with each new catalog release suggests that Earth-size planets in the habitable zone are forthcoming if, indeed, such planets are abundant.

Planets embedded within dust disks may drive the formation of large scale clumpy dust structures by trapping dust into resonant orbits. Detection and subsequent modeling of the dust structures would help constrain the mass and orbit of the planet and the disk architecture, give clues to the history of the planetary system, and provide a statistical estimate of disk asymmetry for future exoEarth-imaging missions. Here, we present the first search for these resonant structures in the inner regions of planetary systems by analyzing the light curves of hot Jupiter planetary candidates identified by the Kepler mission. We detect only one candidate disk structure associated with KOI 838.01 at the 3 sigma confidence level, but subsequent radial velocity measurements reveal that KOI 838.01 is a grazing eclipsing binary and the candidate disk structure is a false positive. Using our null result, we place an upper limit on the frequency of dense exozodi structures created by hot Jupiters. We find that at the 90% confidence level, less than 21% of Kepler hot Jupiters create resonant dust clumps that lead and trail the planet by similar to 90 degrees with optical depths greater than or similar to 5 x 10(-6), which corresponds to the resonant structure expected for a lone hot Jupiter perturbing a dynamically cold dust disk 50 times as dense as the zodiacal cloud.

Core accretion and disk instability require giant protoplanets to form in the presence of disk gas. Protoplanet migration models generally assume disk masses low enough that the disk's self-gravity can be neglected. However, disk instability requires a disk massive enough to be marginally gravitationally unstable (MGU). Even for core accretion, an FU Orionis outburst may require a brief MGU disk phase. We present a new set of three-dimensional, gravitational radiation hydrodynamics models of MGU disks with multiple protoplanets, which interact gravitationally with the disk and with each other, including disk gas mass accretion. Initial protoplanet masses are 0.01 to 10 M-circle plus for core accretion models, and 0.1 to 3 M-Jup for Nice scenario models, starting on circular orbits with radii of 6, 8, 10, or 12 AU, inside a 0.091 M-circle dot disk extending from 4 to 20 AU around a 1 M-circle dot protostar. Evolutions are followed for up to similar to 4000 yr and involve phases of relative stability (e similar to 0.1) interspersed with chaotic phases (e similar to 0.4) of orbital interchanges. The 0.01 to 10 M-circle plus cores can orbit stably for similar to 1000 yr: monotonic inward or outward orbital migration of the type seen in low mass disks does not occur. A system with giant planet masses similar to our solar system (1.0, 0.33, 0.1, 0.1 M-Jup) was stable for over 1000 yr, and a Jupiter-Saturn-like system was stable for over 3800 yr, implying that our giant planets might well survive an MGU disk phase.

Magnetic fields are important contributors to the dynamics of collapsing molecular cloud cores, and can have a major effect on whether collapse results in a single protostar or fragmentation into a binary or multiple protostar system. New models are presented of the collapse of magnetic cloud cores using the adaptive mesh refinement code Enzo2.0. The code was used to calculate the ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) of initially spherical, uniform density, and rotation clouds with density perturbations, i.e., the Boss & Bodenheimer standard isothermal test case for three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamics codes. After first verifying that Enzo reproduces the binary fragmentation expected for the non-magnetic test case, a large set of models was computed with varied initial magnetic field strengths and directions with respect to the cloud core axis of rotation (parallel or perpendicular), density perturbation amplitudes, and equations of state. Three significantly different outcomes resulted: (1) contraction without sustained collapse, forming a denser cloud core; (2) collapse to form a single protostar with significant spiral arms; and (3) collapse and fragmentation into binary or multiple protostar systems, with multiple spiral arms. Comparisons are also made with previous MHD calculations of similar clouds with a barotropic equations of state. These results for the collapse of initially uniform density spheres illustrate the central importance of both magnetic field direction and field strength for determining the outcome of dynamic protostellar collapse.

We present the results of a search for planetary companions orbiting near hot Jupiter planet candidates (Jupiter-size candidates with orbital periods near 3 d) identified in the Kepler data through its sixth quarter of science operations. Special emphasis is given to companions between the 2: 1 interior and exterior mean-motion resonances. A photometric transit search excludes companions with sizes ranging from roughly two-thirds to five times the size of the Earth, depending upon the noise properties of the target star. A search for dynamically induced deviations from a constant period (transit timing variations) also shows no significant signals. In contrast, comparison studies of warm Jupiters (with slightly larger orbits) and hot Neptune-size candidates do exhibit signatures of additional companions with these same tests. These differences between hot Jupiters and other planetary systems denote a distinctly different formation or dynamical history.