Integral field optical spectroscopy using the INTEGRAL system, complemented with HST imaging, has been used to characterize the merging process giving rise to the ultraluminous infrared galaxy IRAS 08572+3915, the star formation along the tidal tails of the galaxy, and the nature of the nuclear ionizing sources deep within the galaxy. The overall

The formation and evolution of galaxies is imprinted on their stellar population radial gradients. Two recent articles present conflicting results concerning the mass dependence of the metallicity gradients for early-type dwarf galaxies. On one side, Spolaor et al. (2009) show a tight positive correlation between the total metallicity [Z/H] and the

We measure the differential microlensing of the UV Fe II and Fe III emission line blends between 14 quasar image pairs in 13 gravitational lenses. We find that the UV iron emission is strongly microlensed in four cases with amplitudes comparable to that of the continuum. Statistically modeling the magnifications, we infer a typical size of r_s\sim

We compare the planet-to-star mass-ratio distribution measured by gravitational microlensing to core accretion theory predictions from population synthesis models. The core accretion theory’s runaway gas accretion process predicts a dearth of intermediate-mass giant planets that is not seen in the microlensing results. In particular, the models

We estimate the fraction of mass that is composed of compact objects in gravitational lens galaxies. This study is based on microlensing measurements (obtained from the literature) of a sample of 29 quasar image pairs seen through 20 lens galaxies. We determine the baseline for no microlensing magnification between two images from the ratios of

The complete catalogue of Wolf-Rayet (W-R) stars was used to search for new IRAS structures, traced by HiRes maps. The dust temperature was computed in all the fields. Different morphologies and temperature gradients around the stars were noted. Although these results should be considered as preliminary, they illustrate the relationship between