The measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for transiting exoplanetsplaces constraints on the orientation of the orbital axis with respect to the stellar spin axis, which can shed light on the mechanisms shaping the orbital configuration of planetary systems. Here we present the interesting case of the Saturn-mass planet HAT-P-18b, which orbits one of the coolest stars for which the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect has been measured so far. We acquired a spectroscopic time-series, spanning a full transit, with the HARPS-N spectrograph mounted at the TNG telescope. The very precise radial

We present a new deep determination of the spectroscopic LF within the virial radius of the nearby and massive Abell 85 (A85) cluster down to the dwarf regime (M*+6) using VLT/VIMOS spectra for ~2000 galaxies with m r ≤ 21 mag and <μ e,r > ≤ 24 mag arcsec -2. The resulting LF from 438 cluster members is best modeled by a double Schechter function due to the presence of a statistically significant upturn at the faint-end. The amplitude of this upturn (α f = -1.58 +0.19 -0.15), however, is much smaller than that of the SDSS composite photometric cluster LF by Popesso et al. (2006, α f ~-2)

Happy New Year 2014 from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC)

With the Canaricam instrument on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC), a team of researchers known as ‘Los Piratas’ have caught a system of two galaxies fused together in collision, feeding two black holes at their centres

Astronomers at the IAC have discovered complex patterns of resonances in the discs of spiral galaxies not previously described by theories. Using the GHaFaS 2dimensional spectrometer they have measured the velocities of the density waves in the discs of over a hundred galaxies Within the discs of spiral galaxies there are waves which propagate concentrically in the form of spirals. This is somewhat similar to the waves on the surface of a lake, or the standing waves on the strings of a violin, or on the surface of a drum, to use a musical metaphor. These are the so-called “density waves”

NASA: The Geminids from the Canaries, astronomical image of the day We receive a message from an asteroid in the guise of a meteor shower