The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission. The spacecraft will be placed into a highly elliptical 13.7-day orbit around the Earth. During its 2-year mission, TESS will employ four wide-field

Context. Stars that have evolved off the main sequence are crucial for expanding the frontiers of knowledge on exoplanets toward higher stellar masses and for constraining star-planet interaction mechanisms. These stars have an intrinsic activity, however, which complicates the interpretation of precise radial velocity (RV) measurements, and

Context. Young, close stars are ideal targets for searching planets using the direct imaging technique. The determination of stellar parameters is crucial for the interpretation of imaging survey results, particularly since the luminosity of substellar objects has a strong dependence on system age. Aims: We have conducted a large program with NaCo

We explore the stellar initial mass function (IMF) of a sample of 49 massive quiescent galaxies (MQGs) at 0.9 z 1.5. We base our analysis on intermediate resolution spectro-photometric data in the GOODS-N field taken in the near-infrared and optical with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 G141 grism and the Survey for High-z

As part of a long-term programme, we analyse the evolutionary status and properties of the old and populous open cluster Trumpler 5 (Tr 5), located in the Galactic anticentre direction, almost on the Galactic plane. Tr 5 was observed with Wide Field Imager@MPG/ESO Telescope using the Bessel U, B, and V filters. The cluster parameters have been

We present spectra of the nuclear regions of 50 nearby (D = 1 - 92 Mpc, median = 20 Mpc) galaxies of morphological types E to Sm. The spectra, obtained with the Gemini Near-IR Spectrograph on the Gemini North telescope, cover a wavelength range of approximately 0.85-2.5 μm at R∼1300-1800. There is evidence that most of the galaxies host an active