We present five serendipitous spectroscopic interacting Lyman break galaxy (LBG) pairs and six candidate pairs from our z 3 Keck survey. All galaxies in the pairs exhibit Lyα in emission and we show that this is not a selection effect. A complete investigation of all LBG spectroscopic-photometric pairs with at least one spectroscopically confirmed

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) will cover some 5000 square degrees in the southern hemisphere. The survey will use a set of filters which are derived from the SDSS ugriz set, but are different enough in their passbands to require new standard stars for use by non-DES observers. This is especially true for the DES -z and -Y bands. We present a

In this work we report preliminary results of a search for shortperiod variable stars in the open cluster NGC 6531. In particular we looked for new roAp, Delta-Scuti and gamma-Doradus stars. We collected high-precision V-Bessel time-series data with the SOAR Optical Imager (SOI) at the SOAR 4.1m telescope. The data were reduced using a custom

The TeV blazars Markarian 421 and Markarian 501 are excellent laboratories for studying the physical processes within the jets of active galactic nuclei due to their history of extreme variability. However, the potential for rapid variability in these objects makes it important for strictly simultaneous multi-wavelength data to be utilized for

As part of our on-going investigation into the magnetic field properties of ultracool dwarfs, we present simultaneous radio, X-ray, and Hα observations of three M9.5-L2.5 dwarfs (BRI 0021-0214, LSR 060230.4+391059, and 2MASS J052338.2-140302). We do not detect X-ray or radio emission from any of the three sources, despite previous detections of

The Milky Way's thick disk was originally identified by fitting the vertical density distribution of stars to a double exponential profile. Recent investigations have shown that, in addition to being older, thick disk stars show chemical and kinematical properties distinct from the thin disk. Most scenarios of thick disk formation discussed to date