The idea that dark matter can be made of intermediate-mass primordial black holes (PBHs) in the 10 M ⊙ ≲ M ≲ 200 M ⊙ range has recently been reconsidered, particularly in the light of the detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment. The existence of even a small fraction of dark matter in black holes should nevertheless result in

We have used Spitzer images of a sample of 68 barred spiral galaxies in the local universe to make systematic measurements of bar length and bar strength. We combine these with precise determinations of the corotation radii associated with the bars, taken from our previous study, which used the phase change from radial inflow to radial outflow of

Improved jet energy scale corrections, based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb-1 collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, are presented. The corrections as a function of pseudorapidity η and transverse momentum pT are extracted from data and simulated events

We report three newly discovered exoplanets from the SuperWASP survey. WASP-127b is a heavily inflated super-Neptune of mass 0.18±0.02 MJ and radius 1.37±0.04 RJ. This is one of the least massive planets discovered by the WASP project. It orbits a bright host star (Vmag = 10.16) of spectral type G5 with a period of 4.17 days. WASP-127b is a low

We report the discovery of four massive (M > 0.8 M⊙) ZZ Ceti white dwarfs, including an ultramassive 1.16 M⊙ star. We obtained ground-based, time series photometry for 13 white dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 and Data Release 10 whose atmospheric parameters place them within the ZZ Ceti instability strip. We detect

After more than 26 years in quiescence, the black hole transient V404 Cyg went into a luminous outburst in 2015 June, and additional activity was detected in late December of the same year. Here, we present an optical spectroscopic follow-up of the December mini-outburst, together with X-ray, optical and radio monitoring that spanned more than a