The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is a 2.4-m optical telescope in low Earth orbit, launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. Since the optics were corrected to their intended specifications by a 1993 servicing mission, the telescope has been capturing breathtaking images of the universe with unparalleled sensitivity and angular resolution. Over the past 25 years, the research enabled by Hubble has had a profound impact on most areas of astronomy. I will present Hubble's history, review the current instruments, and discuss the eligibility of Polish astronomers to submit Hubble proposals. This will be followed by a 40-min documentary "IMAX: Hubble 3D".

Formation and evolution of galaxies have been a central driving force in the studies of galaxies and cosmology. Recent studies provided a global picture of cosmic star formation history. However, what drives the evolution of star formation activities in galaxies has long been a matter of debate. The key factor of the star formation is the transition of hydrogen from atomic to molecular state, since the star formation is associated with the molecular phase. This transition is also strongly coupled with chemical evolution, because dust grains, i.e., tiny solid particles of heavy elements, play a critical role in molecular formation. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of neutral – molecular gas transition, star formation and chemical enrichment is necessary to clarify the galaxy formation and evolution. Here we present the activity of SKA-JP galaxy evolution subWG.

Our activity is focused on three epochs: z ∼ 0, 1, and z > 3. At z ∼ 0, we try to construct a unified picture of atomic and molecular hydrogen through nearby galaxies in terms of metallicity and other various ISM properties. Up to intermediate redshifts z ∼ 1, we explore scaling relations including gas and star formation properties, like the main sequence and the Kennicutt–Schmidt law of star forming galaxies. To connect the global studies with spatially-resolved investigations, such relations will be plausibly a viable way. For high redshift objects, the absorption lines of HI 21-cm line will be a very promising observable to explore the properties of gas in galaxies. By these studies, we will surely witness a real revolution in the studies of galaxies by SKA.

The baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) peak at about 105 Mpc/h has provided a test of the LambdaCDM standard cosmological model - according to which comoving space is rigid - for about a decade. The BAO peak has been especially useful as a standard ruler for measuring the parameters of the cosmological metric in the context of the same (Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker) family of cosmological models. However, general relativity does not require comoving space to be rigid. During the virialisation epoch during which the most massive structures form by gravitational collapse, it should be expected that comoving space evolves along with structure growth. The BAO peak standard ruler should also follow this evolution if the comoving rigidity assumption is false. The first observational detection of the flexibility of this "ruler" will be presented.

In this talk I will summarize and critically re-examine the current understanding of particle acceleration in various astrophysical sources of high energy particles and radiation. In particular, I will focus on the role the gamma-ray astronomy plays recently in establishing the origin of Galactic cosmic rays, as well as extragalactic cosmic rays (including ultra-high-energy cosmic rays).

The redshifted 21cm line of neutral hydrogen (HI), which can potentially be observed at low radio frequencies (~ 50-200 MHz), is a powerful probe of the physical conditions of the inter-galactic medium during Cosmic Dawn and the Epoch of Reionisation (EoR). The sky-averaged HI signal (global EoR) is expected to be extremely weak (of the order of 100 mK) in comparison to the foregrounds of up to 10000 K at the lowest frequencies. Moreover, the tiny signature of the EoR has to be identified amongst instrumental effects. Precision better than 10mK at 80 MHz requires tens of hours of integration with a highly calibrated system, however the overall accuracy can be affected by propagation effects in the ionosphere. BIGHORNS (Broadband Instrument for Global HydrOgen ReioNisation Signal) is a total power radiometer designed and build at Curtin University (Perth, Western Australia) to detect signature of the global Epoch of Reionisation in the-sky averaged spectrum. After several test deployments in remote, radio-quiet locations in Western Australia, in October 2014 the system with a conical log spiral antenna was permanently deployed at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), where it also monitors radio-frequency interference (RFI) at the future site of the low-frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). I will present the BIGHORNS instrument and address the main challenges of the global EoR measurement. I will also present analysis of the 2014/2015 data collected at the MRO assessing the significance of the ionospheric effects on the ground-based detection of the global EoR signal. The results of this analysis suggest the ionospheric effects and fluctuations are not fundamental impediments preventing ground-based instruments from integrating down to the precision required by global EoR experiments, provided that the ionospheric contribution is accounted for in the data analysis. Finally, I will give a brief overview of some SKA-low activities in Western Australia.

General relativistic description of cosmological structure formation is an important challenge from both theoretical and numerical point of view. In my presentation I will give a brief prescription for a general relativistic treatment of structure formation and a resulting mass function on galaxy cluster scales in a highly generic scenario. These results are obtained within the Buchert scalar averaging scheme together with the relativistic generalization of Zel'dovich's approximation (RZA) that serves as a closure condition for the averaged equations. Furthemore, I will discuss some effective cosmological models and an observational imprints of non-linear relativistic effects.

Wspólny zakres częstotliwości fal elektromagnetycznych ELF obserwowanych na powierzchni Ziemi z oczekiwanymi częstotliwościami astrofizycznych źródeł fal grawitacyjnych stworzył realne niebezpieczeństwo zakłócania pracy detektorów tych fal. Ze względu na słabość oddziaływań grawitacyjnych, nawet najsłabsze mechanizmy fizyczne prowadzące do powstawania sił elektrodynamicznych w układach zawieszeń mas próbnych detektorów muszą być brane pod uwagę. W wykładzie znajdzie się krótkie omówienie obecnego stanu badań fal elektromagnetycznych ELF prowadzonych przez Krakowski Zespół ELF oraz wstępne wyniki współpracy z Zespołem Virgo - POLGRAW w zakresie usuwania wpływu tych fal na sygnały wyjściowe detektorów grawitacyjnych LIGO i Virgo.

The angular resolution of all today's telescopes is limited by their diffraction limit. As a result, their ability to produce resolved images of astrophysical targets is limited. A recent idea of a Quantum Telescope is aimed at beating the diffraction limit. I present the detailed simulations of possible gains of QTs and discuss their feasibility and maturity of the present-day technology.

It seems to be a striking coincidence that all putative cosmic ray sources which are dynamically able to fill the universe with the observed extragalactic cosmic ray density can produce the same maximum confinement energy, eBR ~ 10^20 eV, while being spread in scale R over 10 orders of magnitude - the most impressive representation of this coincidence is the famous Hillas plot, in which all "interesting" sources of extragalactic cosmic rays fall on one line close to the observed maximum energy. We present here a potential explanation for this, by assuming that cosmic ray production is a byproduct of the generation of non-thermal energy during the gravitational contraction of the Universe, i.e. structure formation. This approach reproduces, by order of magnitude, both the maximum energy and the total power observed in ultra-high energy cosmic rays, and predicts a natural scaling between various potential cosmic ray sources. Together with structure formation simulations and reconstructions, it may thus serve as a prior for cosmic ray arrival directions for Bayesian modelling of Galactic magnetic field.

Accreting binary stellar systems containing black holes and low-mass donors are transient, i.e., they outburst after a period of quiescence, and those with high-mass donors are persistent. Both of them exhibit two main luminous states, spectrally soft and hard. Their X-ray spectra in the soft and hard states are dominated by blackbody emission of accretion discs peaking around 1 keV, and by a component peaking around 100 keV from Compton scattering by mildly relativistic electrons, respectively. There is a general consensus about the nature of the soft state, in which an optically thick accretion disc emitting blackbody radiation extends down to the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) around the black hole. However, there is currently a heated controversy regarding the nature of the hard state. According to a long-dominant paradigm, the accretion disc in this state is truncated at a radius >> ISCO and replaced by a hot flow emitting hard X-rays. This explains many observed phenomena, e.g., spectral and variability differences between the states and transition to the hard state from quiescence (when the disc is certainly truncated) in transients. On the other hand, there have been numerous claims that the disc extends to ISCO also in the hard state, and the hard X-ray source is located on the black-hole rotation axis and very close to the horizon (a 'lamppost'). I will discuss both the theoretical and observational arguments for the disc truncation and against the 'lamppost' geometry.

The importance of molecular modelling will be introduced on the example of geocentric versus heliocentric models of the universe. The modelling is essential to understand the structure and fragmentation dynamics of biochemical molecules exposed to intense x-ray pulses. The fragmentation dynamics is probed using covariance mapping - a statistical data analysis technique, which is potentially applicable to a wide range of scientific problems, including even the mystery of consciousness.