Kasia Malek's web page

Redshifts of a supernova (SN) and gamma-ray burst (GRB) samples are compared with the pixel temperatures of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) seven-years data near the pixels locations corresponding to the SN and GRB sky coordinates. We have found a statistically significant correlation of the SNe redshifts with the WMAP data, the average temperature deviation being +29.9 +-4.4 microK for the redshifts z ranging from 0.5 to 1.0 and +8.6 +-1.3 microK for z within the range (0.0,0.4). The latter value accords with the theoretical estimates for the distortion of the cosmic microwave background due to the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, whereas the larger anomaly for higher redshifts should be studied in more detail in the future.

We have performed a careful investigation of the 74 candidate VARIABLE STARs presented by Safanova & Stalin (2011). For this purpose we used our data base of imaging and light curves from Arellano Ferro et al. (2011) and Arellano Ferro et al. (2012). We find that two candidates are known VARIABLE STARs, eight candidates were discovered first by Arellano Ferro et al. (2011) but would not have been known to Safanova & Stalin (2011) at the time of their paper submission, while four candidates are new VARIABLES. Three of the new VARIABLES are SX Phe type and one is a semi-regular red giant variable (SR type). We also tentatively confirm the presence of true variability in two other candidates and we are unable to investigate another four candidates because they are not in our data base. However, we find that the remaining 54 candidate VARIABLE STARs are spurious detections where systematic trends in the light curves have been mistaken for true variability. We believe that the erroneous detections are caused by the adoption of a very low detection threshold used to identify these candidates.

We revisit a core prediction of the disc instability model (DIM) applied to X-ray BINARIES. The model predicts the existence of a critical mass transfer rate, which depends on disc size, separating transient and persistent systems. We therefore selected a sample of 52 persistent and transient neutron star and black hole X-ray BINARIES and verified if observed persistent (transient) systems do lie in the appropriate stable (unstable) region of parameter space predicted by the model. We find that, despite the significant uncertainties inherent to this kind of studies, the data are in very good agreement with the theoretical expectations. We then discuss some individual cases that do not clearly fit into this main conclusion. Finally, we introduce the transientness parameter as a measure of the activity of a source and showed a clear trend of the average outburst recurrence time to decrease with transientness in agreement with the DIM predictions. We therefore conclude that, despite difficulties in reproducing the complex details of the lightcurves, the DIM succeeds to explain the global behaviour of X-ray BINARIES averaged over a long enough period of time.

The bipolarity of Supernova 1987A can be understood through its very early light curve observed from the CTIO 0.4-m telescope and IUE FES, and following speckle observations of the `Mystery Spot' by two groups. These indicate a highly directional beam/jet of light/particles, with initial collimation factors in excess of 10,000 and velocities in excess of 0.95 c, as an impulsive event of up to 1e-5 solar masses interacting with circumstellar material, and can be understood through pulsar emission from polarization currents induced/(modulated faster than c) beyond the pulsar light cylinder by the periodic electromagnetic field, (supraluminally induced polarization currents -- SLIP). SLIP accounts for the disruption of progenitors in supernova explosions and their anomalous dimming at cosmological distances, jets from Sco X-1 and SS 433, the lack/presence of intermittent pulsations from the high/low luminosity low mass X-ray BINARIES, long/short gamma-ray bursts and predicts that their afterglows are the pulsed optical/near infrared emission associated with these pulsars. SLIP may account for the TeV e+/e- results from PAMELA and ATIC, the WMAP `Haze'/Fermi `Bubbles', and the r-process. SLIP jets from SNe of the first stars may allow galaxies to form without dark matter, and explain the peculiar, non-gravitational motions observed from pairs of distant galaxies by GALEX.

The formation of stars above about twenty solar masses and their apparently high multiplicity remain heavily debated subjects in astrophysics. We have performed a vast high-resolution radial velocity spectroscopic survey of about 250 O- and 540 B-type stars in the southern Milky Way which indicates that the majority of stars (> 82%) with masses above 16 solar masses form close BINARY systems while this fraction rapidly drops to 20% for stars of 3 solar masses. The BINARY fractions of O- type stars among different environment classes are: clusters (72 \pm 13%), associations (73 \pm 8%), field (43 \pm 13%), and runaways (69 \pm 11%). The high frequency of close pairs with components of similar mass argues in favour of a multiplicity originating from the formation process rather than from a tidal capture in a dense cluster. The high BINARY frequency of runaway O stars that we found in our survey (69% compared to 19-26% in previous surveys) points to the importance of ejection from young star clusters and thus supports the competitive accretion scenario.