We review the progress of ESO/WFI Imaging and VLT/FLAMES spectroscopy of large numbers of individual stars in nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies by the Dwarf Abundances and Radial-velocities Team (DART). These observations have allowed us to show that neither the kinematics nor the abundance nor the spatial distributions are easy to explain in a

We have studied the effect of the mass of the central star (CS) on the gas evolution during the planetary nebula (PN) phase. We have performed numerical simulations of PN formation using CS tracks for six stellar core masses corresponding to initial masses from 1 to 5 Msolar. The gas structure resulting from the previous asymptotic giant branch

We present results from a subset of simulations from the `Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments' (EAGLE) suite in which the formulation of the hydrodynamics scheme is varied. We compare simulations that use the same subgrid models without recalibration of the parameters but employing the standard GADGET flavour of smoothed

The potential discovery of Earth-like planets around other stars will need, apart from a sophisticated technological development, the design of techniques for identifying the most representative parameters of their atmospheres and surfaces. The search for life will constitutes the holy grail of this search. However, for many decades the

In this paper, we derive the fundamental properties of 1SWASPJ011351.29+314909.7 (J0113+31), a metal-poor (-0.40 ± 0.04 dex), eclipsing binary in an eccentric orbit (~0.3) with an orbital period of ~14.277 d. Eclipsing M dwarfs that orbit solar-type stars (EBLMs), like J0113+31, have been identified from their light curves and follow-up

The discovery of almost two thousand exoplanets has revealed an unexpectedly diverse planet population. We see gas giants in few-day orbits, whole multi-planet systems within the orbit of Mercury, and new populations of planets with masses between that of the Earth and Neptune—all unknown in the Solar System. Observations to date have shown that