The primary challenge of Global Oscillations at Low Frequency New Generation (GOLF-NG) is the detection of the low-frequency solar gravity and acoustic modes, as well as the possibility to measure the high-frequency chromospheric modes. On June 8th 2008, the first sunlight observations with the multichannel resonant GOLF-NG prototype spectrometer

LIRIS is a near-infrared (1-2.5 microns) intermediate resolution spectrograph (R=1000-3000) with added capabilities for multi-slit, imaging, coronography, and polarimetry, built by the IAC as a common instrument for the 4.2m WHT (La Palma, Spain). LIRIS has been used as a visiting astronomer instrument at the WHT since summer 2004. The image

Large telescopes require a very precise calibration in order to maximize its scientific output. Current catalogues of standard stars are generally too bright for 10m telescopes. For GTC we are planning to produce a catalogue with calibration stars which are suitable for this telescope. In this paper we describe the first steps of the GTC

The radiative transfer equation (RTE) gives us information about how the light streams through the medium. It must be inverted in order to obtain the properties of the medium that generated the observation. While there are a number of well discussed methods to approach the solution of the inversion, none of them is suitable for the real-time

Aims: The aim of the project is to improve our current knowledge of the density of T dwarfs and the shape of the substellar initial mass function by identifying a magnitude-limited sample of T dwarfs in the full southern sky. Methods: We present the results of a photometric search aimed at discovering cool brown dwarfs in the southern sky imaged at

Colour-magnitude diagrams in the Washington system are presented for the first time for five star clusters projected on to the outer region of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The clusters are found to have ages in the range 0.1-1.0 Gyr, as derived from the fit of isochrones with Z = 0.004. This sample increases substantially the number of young