Context: Determining the parameters of massive stars is crucial to understand many processes in galaxies and the Universe, since these objects are important sources of ionization, chemical enrichment and momentum. 10m class telescopes enable us to perform detailed quantitative spectroscopic analyses of massive stars in other galaxies, sampling

We present an examination of high-resolution, ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy from Hubble Space Telescope of the photospheric spectrum of the O-supergiant in the massive X-ray binary HD 226868 = Cyg X-1. We analyzed this and ground-based optical spectra to determine the effective temperature and gravity of the O9.7 Iab supergiant. Using non-LTE, line

Context: We present the results of a near-infrared photometric and spectroscopic study of the star-forming region G61.48+0.09. Aims: The purpose of this study is to characterize the stellar content of the cluster and to determine its distance, extinction, age, and mass. Methods: The stellar population was studied by using color-magnitude diagrams

The plenoptic wavefront sensor combines measurements at pupil and image planes in order to obtain wavefront information from different points of view simultaneously, being capable to sample the volume above the telescope to extract the tomographic information of the atmospheric turbulence. After describing the working principle, a laboratory setup

Context: Observations made with the spectropolarimeter onboard the HINODE satellite have detected abundant horizontal magnetic fields in the internetwork quiet Sun. Aims: We compare the results for the horizontal fields obtained at 630 nm with ground-based observations at 1.56 μm, where the sensitivity to magnetic fields is higher than in the

The Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys (HST/ACS) Coma Cluster Treasury Survey is a deep two-passband imaging survey of the nearest very rich cluster of galaxies, covering a range of galaxy density environments. The imaging is complemented by a recent wide field redshift survey of the cluster conducted with Hectospec on the 6.5-m