We present the optical to near-infrared spectrum of MAXI J1659-152 during the onset of its 2010 X-ray outburst. The spectrum was obtained with X-shooter on the ESO Very Large Telescope early in the outburst simultaneous with high-quality observations at both shorter and longer wavelengths. At the time of the observations, the source was in the low

For some time the Milky Way has been understood as a barred disk galaxy. Star count observations have provided evidence for two bars at apparently different orientations, the boxy bulge and a long planar bar. We report recent work in which we argued for a scenario where these observations can be reproduced with a single boxy bulge/bar: an evolved

The aim of this work is the determination of the twist, writhe, and self-magnetic helicity of penumbral filaments located in an inner sunspot penumbra. For this purpose, we inverted data taken with the spectropolarimeter on board Hinode with the SIR (Stokes Inversion based on Response function) code. For the construction of a three-dimensional

We report the discovery by the CoRoT space mission of a new giant planet, CoRoT-20b. The planet has a mass of 4.24 ± 0.23 MJup and a radius of 0.84 ± 0.04 RJup. With a mean density of 8.87 ± 1.10 g cm-3, it is among the most compact planets known so far. Evolutionary models for the planet suggest a mass of heavy elements of the order of 800 M⊕ if

CoRoT is a space telescope which aims at studying internal structure of stars and detecting extrasolar planets. We present here a list of transits detected in the light curves of stars observed by CoRoT in two fields in the anti-center direction: the LRa03 one observed during 148 days from 3 October 2009 to 1 March 2010 followed by the SRa03 one

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