Context. The great majority of early-type dwarf galaxies, in the Local Group as well as in other galaxy groups, are found in the vicinity of much larger galaxies, making it hard to disentangle the role of internal versus external effects in driving their evolution. Aims: In order to minimize environmental effects and gain an insight into the

Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun, hosts a habitable-zone planet (Anglada-Escude' et al. 2016 Nature 536, 437). Several teams have sought Proxima b's transits using ground-based photometry, and have reported tentative transit detections (Liu et al. 2018 AJ 155, 12; Blank et al. 2018 AJ 155, 228; others). Proxima, a modest-sized M-dwarf

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is currently on its way to the asteroid (101955) Bennu. Bennu is a primitive asteroid, characterized by a dark surface composed mainly of carbon compounds, organic, and silicates altered by the presence of water. In addition, due to its proximity to the Earth, is classified as a potentially dangerous asteroid (PHA). Among

We present a study of the three-dimensional (3D) structure of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using ∼2.2 million red clump (RC) stars selected from the Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History. To correct for line-of-sight dust extinction, the intrinsic RC color and magnitude and their radial dependence are carefully measured by using internal

This thesis is focused on studying the structure and substructures in dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) satellites of the Milky Way (MW), mainly on the spatial distribution, but also on the internal kinematic and metallicity properties of their stellar component, from the analysis of large samples of individual stars. Due to the proximity of these