We are carrying out a large ancillary program with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, SDSS-III, using the fiber-fed multi-object near-infrared APOGEE spectrograph, to obtain high-resolution H-band spectra of more than 1200 M dwarfs. These observations will be used to measure spectroscopic rotational velocities, radial velocities, physical stellar

We present an overview of the ongoing Hubble Space Telescope large program GO-12911. The program is focused on the core of M 4, the nearest Galactic globular cluster, and the observations are designed to constrain the number of binaries with massive companions (black holes, neutron stars, or white dwarfs) by measuring the ``wobble'' of the luminous

We compute the z = 3 neutral hydrogen column density distribution function f(NHI) for 19 simulations drawn from the Overwhelmingly Large Simulations project using a post-processing correction for self-shielding calculated with full radiative transfer of the ionizing background radiation. We investigate how different physical processes and

Observational studies are showing that the galaxy-wide stellar initial mass function (IMF) is top-heavy in galaxies with high star formation rates (SFRs). Calculating the integrated galactic stellar initial mass function (IGIMF) as a function of the SFR of a galaxy, it follows that galaxies which have or which formed with SFRs >10 M⊙ yr-1 would

We present the results of a comparison between the environments of (1) a complete sample of 46 southern 2-Jy radio galaxies at intermediate redshifts (0.05 z 0.7), (2) a complete sample of 20 radio-quiet type-2 quasars (0.3 ≤ z ≤ 0.41), and (3) a control sample of 107 quiescent early-type galaxies at 0.2 ≤ z 0.7 in the Extended Groth Strip. The

Since the launch of the Fermi satellite, BL Lacertae has been moderately active at γ-rays and optical frequencies until 2011 May, when the source started a series of strong flares. The exceptional optical sampling achieved by the GLAST-AGILE Support Program of the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope in collaboration with the Steward Observatory allows us