Some planetary nebulae (PNe) show microstructures of low ionization located in their outer regions, i.e. external to the bright rim defined by the fast vs. slow wind interaction region. Morphological and kinematic analysis of some of these PNe show low ionization knots which clearly share the expansion of the outer shell of the host nebulae (e.g

The GRB010222 optical and near-infrared (NIR) afterglow was monitored at the TNG and other Italian telescopes starting ~ 1 day after the high-energy prompt event. The BVR light curves, which are the best sampled, are continuously steepening and can be described by two power laws, f(t) ~ t-alpha , of indices alpha1 ~ 0.7 and alpha2 ~ 1.3 before and

Over the past 12 years we have been conducting a survey of IRAS (PSC) sources with dust temperatures between 100 and 250 K, which is the temperature of AGB shells after mass loss has ceased. About 1000 PSC sources fulfill this criterion, about half of them identified previously in the literature: most are PNe (49%) and post-AGB stars (27%), but

We present V and R photometry of 16 Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) from the 3.6-m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and the Complejo Astronómico El Leoncito 2.1-m telescope. We find a wide dispersion in the (V-R) colors of the objects, indicating nonuniform surface properties. If we assume near constant albedos, there does not appear to be a general trend

In the high resolution optical spectra we identified forbidden lines of [OI] and [CI], which indicate the presence of low excitation nebula. There are many emission lines due forbidden and permitted lines of neutral and singly ionised metals. The Hα, FeII 6383Å, NaI D1, D2 lines and the CaII IR triplet lines show P-Cygni profiles indicating a mass

We combine results from imaging searches for substellar objects in the σ Orionis cluster and follow-up photometric and spectroscopic observations to derive a census of the brown dwarf population in a region of 847 arcmin2. We identify 64 very low mass cluster member candidates in this region. We have available three-color (I, Z, and J) photometry