Stars are generally spherical, yet their gaseous envelopes often appear nonspherical when ejected near the end of their lives. This quirk is most notable during the planetary nebula phase, when these envelopes become ionized. Interactions among stars in a binary system are suspected to cause the asymmetry. In particular, a precessing accretion disk

We present the discovery of an L0 companion to the nearby M1.5 dwarf G 239-25, at a projected distance of 31 AU. It is the faintest companion discovered so far in our adaptive optics survey of all known M dwarfs within 12 pc, and it lies at the stellar/substellar limit. Given the assumed age of the primary star, the companion is likely an extremely

In this work we analyze time-resolved spectra of SS Cygni in quiescence. The geometrical and orbital fundamental parameters of the system are determined. When in the data the contribution of the secondary star is removed some weak emission lines and a Fe I absorption line become clearly visible. We detect strong emission from the secondary star due

We have analyzed changes in the acoustic oscillation eigenfrequencies measured over the past 7 years by the GONG, MDI, and LOWL instruments. The observations span the period from 1994 to 2001 that corresponds to half a solar cycle, from minimum to maximum solar activity. These data were inverted to look for a signature of the activity cycle on the

We present the results of a homogeneous X-ray analysis for 82 nearby low-ionisation, narrow emission-line regions (LINERs) selected from the catalogue of Carrillo et al. (1999, Rev. Mex. Astron. Astrofis., 35, 187). All sources have available Chandra (68 sources) and/or XMM-Newton (55 sources) observations. This is the largest sample of LINERs with

We present optical spectroscopy and optical and infrared photometry of the neutron star soft X-ray transient Aql X-1 during its X-ray outburst of 1997 August. By modelling the X-ray, optical and IR light curves, we find a 3-d delay between the IR and X-ray rise times, analogous to the UV-optical delay seen in dwarf novae outbursts and black hole X