The AKARI and Spitzer satellites provided an unique opportunity to observe a variety of stars, which are considered as departing from the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) and have started their post-AGB evolution recently. Most of these stars are absent optically and are bright in the mid-IR wavelength range. Spectra of close to 200 objects have been

We study the thermal (tSZ) and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect associated with superclusters of galaxies using the MareNostrum (MNU) universe smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation. In particular, we consider superclusters with characteristics (total mass, overdensity and number density of cluster members) similar to those of the

We present a general analytical formalism to calculate accurately several statistics related to underdense regions in the Universe. The statistics are computed for dark matter halo and galaxy distributions both in real space and redshift space at any redshift. Using this formalism, we found that void statistics for galaxy distributions can be

We present deep long-slit optical spectra for a sample of 36 ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs), taken with the William Herschel Telescope on La Palma with the aim of investigating the star formation histories and testing evolutionary scenarios for such objects. Here we present the sample, the analysis techniques and a general overview of the

The Radiometer Electronics Box Assembly (REBA) is the control and data processing on board computer of the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) of the Planck mission (ESA). The REBA was designed and built incorporating state of the art processors, communication interfaces and real time operating system software in order to meet the scientific performance

Context: Eight accreting millisecond X-ray pulsars (AMXPs) are known to date. Although these systems are well studied at high energies, very little information is available for their optical/NIR counterparts. Up to now, only two of them, SAX J1808.4-3658 and IGR J00291+5934, have a secure multi-band detection of their optical counterparts in