Population synthesis models are a tool extensively used to make inferences about the evolutionary status of stellar populations. In this work I examine the implicit priors assumed to obtain inferences by comparing observational data with populations synthesis models. As a result from this kind of study, I show how a higher spatial resolution can be

The standard physical mechanisms of the continuum emission in the microwave range are the synchrotron, free-free, and/or thermal dust emissions. Nevertheless, and based on observations over the last two decades, we can find a new process of emission, called Anomalous Microwave Emission (AME), which consists of an excess of dust-correlated microwave

The determination of oxygen abundance in nebulae requires measuring a significant number of emission lines distributed along a wide spectral range. The required measurements are hard to obtain at high redshift, where sources are very faint, and where the accessible spectral range is limited. These difficulties are often overcome using empirical

We classified the ˜10^6 galaxy spectra in SDSS/DR7 (Abazajian et al. 2009) into only 17 major classes (ASK classification; Sánchez Almeida et al. 2010). The algorithm provides the goodness of the classification for each individual spectrum and, therefore, a straightforward way to identify those targets which do not fit in the ASK classes. A

OSIRIS is the optical Day One instrument, and so far the only Spanish instrument, currently operating at the GTC. Building and testing an instrument for a 8-10m-class telescope with nonprevious commissioning in turn, has represented a truly unique experience. In this contribution, the current status, the last commissioning results and some future

We present preliminary OSIRIS Hα, [NII] and [SII] images and line-ratios on the large-scale shock (about 40 kpc long) discovered in the most popular compact group of galaxies: the Stephan's Quintet. The images were obtained by the instrument OSIRIS attached to the GTC. In this work we study only the central region of the shock and show that the