We present an atlas of mid-infrared (mid-IR) ˜ 7.5-13 μm spectra of 45 local active galactic nuclei (AGN) obtained with CanariCam on the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC) as part of an ESO/GTC large programme. The sample includes Seyferts and other low-luminosity AGN (LLAGN) at a median distance of 35 Mpc and luminous AGN, namely PG quasars, (U

Spectroscopic studies of primitive asteroid families provide constraints on the composition of the solar nebula and the distribution of volatiles in the asteroid belt. Results from visible and near-infrared spectroscopy show diversity between primitive families. We aim to better constrain the composition of two primitive families with very

In this thesis I focused on the study of the dwarf galaxies in the Local Group (LG). Since they can be resolved into stars, this group of galaxies offers a perfect laboratory to address the still open problems in galaxy formation and evolution. In addition, the LG is composed by a unique mixture of all the morphological types of dwarfs, namely

Massive early-type galaxies undergo a significant process of evolution with redshift on the stellar mass vs size plane. Furthermore, this trend does not depend on the age of their stellar populations. Therefore, such an evolution should involve processes that do not include a significant amount of star formation, leaving (mostly) dry mergers as the

We present a new method to solve the star formation history (SFH) of a complex stellar population system from the analysis of the color-magnitude diagram (CMD). The SFH is obtained in four steps: i) computing a synthetic CMD, ii) simulating observational effects, iii) parametrization and sampling of the synthetic and observed CMDs, and iv) solving

The chemical evolution of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars depends greatly on the input physics (e.g., mass loss recipe, convective model). Variations in the hot bottom burning (HBB) strength, third dredge-up (TDU) efficiency and AGB evolutionary timescale are among the main consequences of adopting different input physics. The ATON evolutionary