We report near-infrared and optical follow-up observations of the afterglow of the GRB 000418 starting 2.5 days after the occurrence of the burst and extending over nearly 7 weeks. GRB 000418 represents the second case for which the afterglow was initially identified by observations in the near-infrared. During the first 10 days its R-band

An identification list is presented for the visible spectra of Pi Cet (B7 V), 36 Lyn (B8 IIIp), and 134 Tau (B9 IV). Equivalent widths are measured on medium dispersion plates of 7.0 and 12.4 A/mm, and the photographic plates are digitized using a PDS 1010A microdensiometer. The effective temperature and gravity of the three stars are estimated

Context. The 30 Doradus (30 Dor) region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, also known as the Tarantula nebula, is the nearest starburst region. It contains the richest population of massive stars in the Local Group, and it is thus the best possible laboratory to investigate open questions on the formation and evolution of massive stars. Aims: Using

We present detailed simulations of the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM) with the gratings of Constellation-X. Simulations are based on the extrapolation of the expected number density of OVII WHIM systems from hydrodynamical simulations of the local Universe, up to redshift of z=1 and down to an OVII column density of 1014 cm-2, and assume

We report the detection of the first two microlensing candidates from the Wendelstein Calar Alto Pixellensing Project (WeCAPP). Both are detected with a high signal-to-noise ratio and were filtered out from 4.5 million pixel light curves using a variety of selection criteria. Here we only consider well-sampled events with timescales of 1 day

We present the second paper of a series of publications aiming at obtaining a better understanding regarding the nature of type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) progenitors by studying a large sample of detached F, G and K main-sequence stars in close orbits with white dwarf companions (i.e. WD+FGK binaries). We employ the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fibre