A detailed analysis of a large collection of electronic spectra from three observatories, together with radial velocities published earlier, were used to derive a new ephemeris and improved orbital elements for the ɛ Per binary. Observations covering a time interval of about 37 000 days (101.3 years) can be reconciled with a constant orbital period

We demonstrate that the mass of the most massive star in a cluster correlates non-trivially with the cluster mass. A simple algorithm, according to which a cluster is filled up with stars that are chosen randomly from the standard initial mass function (IMF) but sorted with increasing mass, yields an excellent description of the observational data

We present an analysis of the globular cluster (GC) system of the nucleated dwarf elliptical galaxy VCC 1087 in the Virgo Cluster based on Keck LRIS spectroscopy and archival Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys imaging. We estimate that VCC 1087 hosts a total population of 77+/-19 GCs, which corresponds to a relatively high V-band

The most prominent features on the surface of the solar disc are the sunspots, which have been studied since their detection in the 17th century. Despite this years and centuries of scientific investigations, surprisingly many facets of sunspots are not well understood. In this thesis, the properties of a sunspots' penumbra are derived from the

Recent studies of the substellar population in the Taurus cloud have revealed a deficit of brown dwarfs compared to the Trapezium cluster population. However, these works have concentrated on the highest stellar density regions of the Taurus cloud. We have performed a large scale optical survey of this region, covering a total area of ≃28 deg^2

We surveyed a small sample of metal-rich solar-like stars in our planet search program during the last 3 years. Here we present the detection of a brown dwarf and 3 long-period massive planet (or brown dwarf) candidates as well as one short-period planet candidate with m sin i ˜ 0.1 M_{Jup}. Furthermore, we calculated the upper mass limits of