We present the results of simulations carried out with the Met Office Unified Model at 12 km, 4 km and 1.5 km resolution for a large region centred on West Africa using several different representations of the convection processes. These span the range of resolutions from much coarser than the size of the convection processes to the cloud-system resolving and thus encompass the intermediate "grey-zone". The diurnal cycle in the extent of convective regions in the models is tested against observations from the Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget instrument on Meteosat-8. By this measure, the two bestperforming simulations are a 12 km model without convective parametrization, using Smagorinsky style sub-grid scale mixing in all three dimensions and a 1.5 km simulations with two-dimensional Smagorinsky mixing. Of these, the 12 km model produces a better match to the magnitude of the total cloud fraction but the 1.5 km results in better timing for its peak value. The results suggest that the previously-reported improvement in the representation of the diurnal cycle of convective organisation in the 4 km model compared to the standard 12 km configuration is principally a result of the convection scheme employed rather than the improved resolution per se. The details of and implications for high-resolution model simulations are discussed.

The organization of deep convection and its misrepresentation in many global models is the focus of much current interest. A new method is presented for quantifying convective organization based on the identification of convective objects and subsequent derivation of object numbers, areas, and separation distances to describe the degree of convective organization. These parameters are combined into a “convection organization potential” based on the physical principle of an interaction potential between pairs of convective objects. This technique is applied to simulated and observed fields of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) over the West African monsoon region using data from Met Office Unified Model simulations and satellite observations made by the Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) instrument. The method is evaluated by using it to quantify differences between models with different horizontal grid lengths and representations of convection. Distributions of OLR, precipitation and organization parameters, the diurnal cycle of convection, and relationships between the meteorology in different states of organization are compared. Switching from a configuration with parameterized convection to one that allows the model to resolve convective processes at the model grid scale is the leading-order factor improving some aspects of model performance, while increased model resolution is the dominant factor for others. However, no single model configuration performs best compared to observations, indicating underlying deficiencies in both model scaling and process understanding.

We present results from 30 nights of observations of the open cluster NGC 7789 with the Wide Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope, La Palma. From ∼900 epochs, we obtained light curves and Sloan r′−i′ colours for ∼33 000 stars, with ∼2400 stars having better than 1 per cent precision. We expected to detect ∼2 transiting hot Jupiter planets if 1 per cent of stars host such a companion and a typical hot Jupiter radius is ∼1.2 RJ. We find 24 transit candidates, 14 of which we can assign a period. We rule out the transiting planet model for 21 of these candidates using various robust arguments. For two candidates, we are unable to decide on their nature, although it seems most likely that they are eclipsing binaries as well. We have one candidate exhibiting a single eclipse, for which we derive a radius of 1.81+0.09−0.00 RJ. Three candidates remain that require follow‐up observations in order to determine their nature.

We present simultaneous multicolor infrared and optical photometry of the black hole X-ray transient XTE J1118+480 during its short 2005 January outburst, supported by simultaneous X-ray observations. The variability is dominated by short timescales, $10 s, although a weak superhump also appears to be present in the optical. The optical rapid variations, at least, are well correlated with those in X-rays. Infrared JHK s photometry, as in the previous outburst, exhibits especially large-amplitude variability. The spectral energy distribution (SED) of the variable infrared component can be fitted with a power law of slope ¼ À0:78 AE 0:07, where F / . There is no compelling evidence for evolution in the slope over five nights, during which time the source brightness decayed along almost the same track as seen in variations within the nights. We conclude that both short-term variability and longer timescale fading are dominated by a single component of constant spectral shape. We cannot fit the SED of the IR variability with a credible thermal component, either optically thick or thin. This IR SED is, however, approximately consistent with optically thin synchrotron emission from a jet. These observations therefore provide indirect evidence to support jet-dominated models for XTE J1118+480 and also provide a direct measurement of the slope of the optically thin emission, which is impossible, based on the average spectral energy distribution alone.