CoRoT, the first space-based transit search, provides ultra-high-precision light curves with continuous time-sampling over periods of up to 5 months. This allows the detection of transiting planets with relatively long periods, and the simultaneous study of the host star's photometric variability. In this Letter, we report the discovery of the

A high-resolution spectroscopic survey of post-outburst novae reveals short-lived heavy element absorption systems in a majority of novae near maximum light, having expansion velocities of 400-1000 km s-1 and velocity dispersions between 35 and 350 km s-1. A majority of systems are accelerated outward, and they all progressively weaken and

The atmospheric Cherenkov telescope MAGIC for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy is operating since late 2003 on the Canary island of La Palma. Its 17 m diameter mirror is composed of 964 square all-aluminum mirrors of ˜0.5m side, making up a parabola of 236 m2 area. Each mirror is composed of a sandwich of two thin aluminum layers interspaced by a

Using effective temperature and metallicity derived from SDSS spectra for ~60,000 F- and G-type main-sequence stars (0.2

We present a detailed comparison of the ionizing spectral energy distributions (SEDs) predicted by four modern stellar atmosphere codes, TLUSTY, CMFGEN, WM-basic and FASTWIND. We consider three sets of stellar parameters representing a late O-type dwarf (O9.5V), a mid-O-type (O7V) dwarf and an early O-type dwarf (O5.5V). We explore two different

We present stellar metallicities derived from Ca II triplet spectroscopy in over 350 red giant branch stars in 13 fields distributed in different positions in the Small Magellanic Cloud, ranging from ~1° to ~4° from its center. In the innermost fields, the average metallicity is [Fe/H] ~-1. This value decreases when we move away toward outermost