The physical nature of the currently observed dark energy in the universe is completely unclear, and many different theoretical models co-exist. Nevertheless, if dark energy is produced by vacuum fluctuations then there is a chance to probe some of its properties by simple laboratory tests based on Josephson junctions. These electronic devices can

The table contains the R.A., Dec., optical and near-IR photometry of candidate members studied in the paper. Optical broad-band photometry is taken with the CFHT 12k camera in the Mould I band and CFHT z band (for effective transmission profile of the z band see e.g. Moraux et al., 2003, Cat. ). Near-IR photometry 2MASS () JHK is listed when a

A sample of 16 blue compact dwarf galaxies (BCDs) in the Virgo Cluster has been imaged in the near-infrared (NIR) in J and Ks on the 2.1 m telescope at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in the Sierra San Pedro Mártir in Mexico. Isophotes as faint as μJ=24 mag arcsec-2 and μKs=23 mag arcsec-2 have been reached in most of the targets. Surface

Not Available

Comet Tempel 1 was observed before and after the impact with the echelle spectrograph SARG on the TNG telescope in La Palma. We are cataloguing the lines visible in the spectra and comparing the spectra between them.

We present U and B galaxy differential number counts from a field of ~900 arcmin2, based on GOYA Survey imaging of the HST Groth-Westphal strip. Source detection efficiency corrections as a function of the object size have been applied. A variation of the half-exposure image method has been devised to identify and remove spurious detections