The Starburst model for radio-quiet Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) postulates that the activity seen in most AGN is powered solely by young stars and compact supernova remnants (cSNR) in a burst of star formation at the time when the metal rich core of the spheroid of a normal early type galaxy was formed. In this model, the broad permitted lines

Context. The various mechanisms of magneto-convective energy transport determine the structure of sunspots and active regions. Aims: We characterise the appearance of light bridges and other fine-structure details and elaborate on their magneto-convective nature. Methods: We present speckle-reconstructed images taken with the broad-band imager (BBI

The dust tail of Main-Belt Asteroid P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) has been observed with several telescopes at the at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma, Spain. Application of an inverse dust tail Monte Carlo method to the images of the dust ejecta from the object implies a sustained activity over some eight months. The onset of the

To preserve the exceptional sky quality of the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, the Spanish Government has subsidized the cost of a programme of streetlighting adaptation on La Palma aimed at minimizing potential light pollution. New non-polluting light fixtures and low-pressure sodium vapour lamps have been used to modified existing lighting

We studied the stellar populations of 40 early-type galaxies using medium-resolution long-slit spectroscopy along their major axes (and along the minor axis for two of them). The sample, including elliptical and lenticular galaxies as well as dwarf galaxies, is combined with other previously published data in order to discuss the systematics of the

We have derived ages and metallicities from co-added spectra of 131 globular clusters associated with the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4472. Based upon a calibration with Galactic globular clusters, we find that our sample of globular clusters in NGC 4472 span a metallicity range of approximately -1.6