We present an updated catalogue of M31 globular clusters (GCs) based on images from the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope and from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Our catalogue includes new, self-consistent ugriz and K-band photometry of these clusters. We discuss the difficulty of obtaining accurate photometry of clusters projected against M31 due to small-scale background structure in the galaxy. We consider the effect of this on the accuracy of our photometry and provide realistic photometric error estimates. We investigate possible contamination in the current M31 GC catalogues using the excellent spatial resolution of these WFCAM images combined with the SDSS multicolour photometry. We identify a large population of clusters with very blue colours. Most of these have recently been proposed by other works as young clusters. We distinguish between these, and old clusters, in the final classifications. Our final catalogue includes 416 old clusters, 156 young clusters and 373 candidate clusters. We also investigate the structure of M31's old GCs using previously published King model fits to these WFCAM images. We demonstrate that the structure and colours of M31's old GC system are similar to those of the Milky Way. One GC (B383) is found to be significantly brighter in previous observations than observed here. We investigate all of the previous photometry of this GC and suggest that this variability appears to be genuine and short lived. We propose that the large increase in its luminosity may have been due to a classical nova in the GC at the time of the previous observations in 1989.

Seitenzahl et al. have predicted that roughly three years after its explosion, the light we receive from a Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) will come mostly from reprocessing of electrons and X-rays emitted by the radioactive decay chain 57 Co→ 57 Fe, instead of positrons from the decay chain 56 Co→ 56 Fe that dominates the SN light at earlier times. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, we followed the light curve of the SN Ia SN 2012cg out to 1055 days after maximum light. Our measurements are consistent with the light curves predicted by the contribution of energy from the reprocessing of electrons and X-rays emitted by the decay of 57 Co, offering evidence that 57 Co is produced in SN Ia explosions. However, the data are also consistent with a light echo ∼14 mag fainter than SN 2012cg at peak. Assuming no light-echo contamination, the mass ratio of 57 Ni and 56 Ni produced by the explosion, a strong constraint on any SN Ia explosion models, is 0.043 0.011 0.012 -+ , roughly twice Solar. In the context of current explosion models, this value favors a progenitor white dwarf with a mass near the Chandrasekhar limit.

We present the first results of a deep Chandra survey of the inner $1 of the Fornax cluster of galaxies. Ten 50 ks pointings were obtained in a mosaic centered on the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1399 at the nominal cluster center. Emission and temperature maps of Fornax are presented, and an initial study of more than 700 detected X-ray point sources is made. Regions as small as 100 pc are resolved. The intracluster gas in Fornax exhibits a highly asymmetric morphology and temperature structure, dominated by a 180 kpc extended ''plume'' of low surface brightness, cool ( 1 keV) gas to the northeast of NGC 1399 with a sharper edge to the southwest. The elliptical galaxy NGC 1404 also exhibits a cool halo of X-ray gas within the cluster, with a highly sharpened leading edge as it presumably falls into the cluster and a comet-like tail. We estimate that some $200-400 point sources are physically associated with Fornax. Confirming earlier works, we find that the globular cluster population in NGC 1399 is highly X-ray active, extending to globular clusters that may in fact be intracluster systems. We have also found a remarkable correlation between the location of giant and dwarf cluster galaxies and the presence of X-ray counterparts, such that systems inhabiting regions of low gas density are more likely to show X-ray activity. Not only does this correlate with the asymmetry of the intracluster gas, but it also correlates with the axis joining the center of Fornax to an infalling group 1 Mpc to the southwest. We suggest that Fornax may be experiencing either an intergalactic ''headwind'' due to motion relative to the surrounding large-scale structure or that the intracluster medium has been disturbed relative to the overall cluster gravitational potential by previous activity.

We present results from the imaging portion of a far-ultraviolet (FUV) survey of the core of 47 Tucanae. We have detected 767 FUV sources, 527 of which have optical counterparts in archival HST/WFPC2 images of the same field. Most of our FUV sources are main-sequence (MS) turnoff stars near the detection limit of our survey. However, the FUV/optical color-magnitude diagram (CMD) also reveals 19 blue stragglers (BSs), 17 white dwarfs (WDs), and 16 cataclysmic variable (CV) candidates. The BSs lie on the extended cluster MS, and four of them are variable in the FUV data. The WDs occupy the top of the cluster cooling sequence, down to an effective temperature of T eff ' 20; 000 K. Our FUV source catalog probably contains many additional, cooler WDs without optical counterparts. Finally, the CV candidates are objects between the WD cooling track and the extended cluster MS. Four of the CV candidates are previously known or suspected cataclysmics. All of these are bright and variable in the FUV. Another CV candidate is associated with the semidetached binary system V36 that was recently found by M. D. Albrow and coworkers. V36 has an orbital period of 0.4 or 0.8 days, blue optical colors, and is located within 1 00 of a Chandra X-ray source. A few of the remaining CV candidates may represent chance superpositions or SMC interlopers, but at least half are expected to be real cluster members with peculiar colors. However, only a few of these CV candidates are possible counterparts to Chandra X-ray sources. Thus, it is not yet clear which, if any, of them are true CVs, rather than noninteracting MS/WD binaries or helium WDs.

We present far-UV spectroscopy obtained with HST for 48 blue objects in the core of 47 Tuc. Based on their position in a FUV-optical colour-magnitude diagram, these were expected to include cataclysmic variables (CVs), blue stragglers (BSs), white dwarfs (WDs) and other exotic objects. For a subset of these sources, we also construct FUV-NIR SEDs. Based on our analysis of this extensive data set, we report the following main results. (1) We spectroscopically confirm 3 previously known or suspected CVs via the detection of emission lines and find new evidence for dwarf nova eruptions in two of these. (2) Only one other source in our spectroscopic sample exhibits marginal evidence for line emission, but predicted and observed CV numbers still agree to within a factor of about 2-3. (3) We have discovered a hot (T_eff = 8700 K), low-mass (M = 0.05 M_sun) secondary star in a previously known 0.8 day binary system. This exotic object is probably the remnant of a subgiant that has been stripped of its envelope and may represent the ``smoking gun'' of a recent dynamical encounter. (4) We have found a Helium WD, the second to be optically detected in 47 Tuc, and the first outside a millisecond-pulsar system. (5) We have discovered a BS-WD binary system, the first known in any globular cluster. (6) We have found two additional candidate WD binary systems with putative main sequence and subgiant companions. (7) We estimate the WD binary fraction in the core of 47 Tuc to be 15 +17/-9 (stat) +8/-7 (sys). (8) One BS in our sample may exceed twice the cluster turn-off mass, but the uncertainties are large. Taken as a whole, our study illustrates the wide range of stellar exotica that are lurking in the cores of GCs, most of which are likely to have undergone significant dynamical encounters. [abridged]Comment: 28 pages, 22 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in ApJ; abstract below is abridged; new version corrects some typos and updates some references; a copy with some higher resolution figures is available from http://www.astro.soton.ac.uk/~christian (under "Research"