This article reviews observations and models of the diffuse ionized gas that permeates the disk and halo of our Galaxy and others. It was inspired by a series of invited talks presented during an afternoon scientific session of the 65th birthday celebration for Professor Carl Heiles held at Arecibo Observatory in August 2004. This review is in

We present a study of the light curve of the transiting exoplanet CoRoT-2b, aimed at detecting the secondary eclipse and measuring its depth. The data were obtained with the CoRoT satellite during its first run of more than 140 days. After filtering the low frequencies with a pre-whitening technique, we detect a 0.0060±0.0020% secondary eclipse

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We demonstrate that a massive asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star is a good candidate as the main source of short-lived radionuclides in the early solar system. Recent identification of massive (4-8 M?) AGB stars in the galaxy, which are both lithium- and rubidium-rich, demonstrates that these stars experience proton captures at the base of the

We present the results of a survey of radial velocities over a wide region extending from r ~= 10 out to 80 arcmin (~1.5 tidal radii) within the massive star cluster ω Centauri (ω Cen). The survey was performed with FLAMES@VLT, to study the velocity dispersion profile in the outer regions of this stellar system. We derived accurate radial

Aims: We analyse the current build-up of stellar mass within the disks and bulges of nearby galaxies through a comparison of the spatial distributions of forming and old stellar populations. Methods: Hα and R-band imaging are used to determine the distributions of young and old stellar populations in 313 S0a-Im field galaxies out to ~40 Mpc