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Context. Diagnostic diagrams of forbidden lines have been a useful tool for observers for many decades now. They are used to obtain information on the basic physical properties of thin gaseous nebulae. Some diagnostic diagrams are in wavelength domains that were difficult to apply either due to missing wavelength coverage or the low resolution of older spectrographs. Furthermore, most of the diagrams were calculated using just the species involved as a single atom gas, although several are affected by well-known fluorescence mechanisms as well. Additionally, the atomic data have improved up to the present time.Aims. The aim of this work is to recalculate well-known, but also sparsely used, unnoted diagnostics diagrams. The new diagrams provide observers with modern, easy-to-use recipes for determining electron temperature and densities. Methods. The new diagnostic diagrams were calculated using large grids of parameter space in the photoionization code CLOUDY. For a given basic parameter (e.g., electron density or temperature), the solutions with cooling-heating-equilibrium were chosen to derive the diagnostic diagrams. Empirical numerical functions were fitted to provide formulas usable in, e.g., data reduction pipelines. Results. The resulting diagrams differ significantly from those used up to now and will improve thermodynamic calculations. To our knowledge, detailed, directly applicable fit formulas are given for the first time, leading to the calculation of electron temperature or density from the line ratios.

The nine-year H.E.S.S. Galactic Plane Survey (HGPS) has yielded the most uniform observation scan of the inner Milky Way in the TeV gamma-ray band to date. The sky maps and source catalogue of the HGPS allow for a systematic study of the population of TeV pulsar wind nebulae found throughout the last decade. To investigate the nature and evolution of pulsar wind nebulae, for the first time we also present several upper limits for regions around pulsars without a detected TeV wind nebula. Our data exhibit a correlation of TeV surface brightness with pulsar spin-down powerĖ. This seems to be caused both by an increase of extension with decreasingĖ, and hence with time, compatible with a power law RPWN(Ė) ∼Ė −0.65±0.20 , and by a mild decrease of TeV gamma-ray luminosity with decreasingĖ, compatible with L1−10 TeV ∼Ė 0.59±0.21 . We also find that the offsets of pulsars with respect to the wind nebula centre with ages around 10 kyr are frequently larger than can be plausibly explained by pulsar proper motion and could be due to an asymmetric environment. In the present data, it seems that a large pulsar offset is correlated with a high apparent TeV efficiency L1−10 TeV /Ė. In addition to 14 HGPS sources considered firmly identified pulsar wind nebulae and 5 additional pulsar wind nebulae taken from literature, we find 10 HGPS sources that are likely TeV pulsar wind nebula candidates. Using a model that subsumes the present common understanding of the very high-energy radiative evolution of pulsar wind nebulae, we find that the trends and variations of the TeV observables and limits can be reproduced to a good level, drawing a consistent picture of present-day TeV data and theory.

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We report on the discovery of a new fast radio burst, FRB 150215, with the Parkes radio telescope on 2015 February 15. The burst was detected in real time with a dispersion measure (DM) of 1105.6±0.8 pc cm −3 , a pulse duration of 2.8 +1.2 −0.5 ms, and a measured peak flux density assuming the burst was at beam center of 0.7 +0.2 −0.1 Jy. The FRB originated at a Galactic longitude and latitude of 24.66 • , 5.28 • , 25 degrees away from the Galactic Center. The burst was found to be 43±5% linearly polarized with a rotation measure (RM) in the range −9 < RM < 12 rad m −2 (95% confidence level), consistent with zero. The burst was followed-up with 11 telescopes to search for radio, optical, X-ray, γ-ray and neutrino emission. Neither transient nor variable emission was found to be associated with the burst and no repeat pulses have been observed in 17.25 hours of observing. The sightline to the burst is close to the Galactic plane and the observed physical properties of FRB 150215 demonstrate the existence of sight lines of anomalously low RM for a given electron column density. The Galactic RM foreground may approach a null value due to magnetic field reversals along the line of sight, a decreased total electron column density from the Milky Way, or some combination of these effects. A lower Galactic DM contribution might explain why this burst was detectable whereas previous searches at low latitude have had lower detection rates than those out of the plane.