Aims: The Spectral and Photometric Imaging REceiver (SPIRE) onboard the Herschel space telescope has provided confusion limited maps of deep fields at 250 μm, 350 μm, and 500 μm, as part of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES). Unfortunately, due to confusion, only a small fraction of the cosmic infrared background (CIB) can be

Recently, the discoveries of several nova candidates in M31 have been reported (ATEL #3735, #3976, and #3987), but there have been no spectroscopic confirmations. To classify these objects, we obtained narrow-band H-alpha, Sloan r', and Sloan i'-band CCD images of the central region of M31 using the 2.5-m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) + WFC at La

We report a gradual (~ 1 mag in 50 days) optical re-brightening of the black hole X-ray binary, GX 339-4. We have been monitoring the source with the 2-m Faulkes Telescope (FT) South (located at Siding Spring, Australia) in SDSS i'-band, Bessel R and Bessel V filters (200-second exposures; see e.g. Cadolle Bel et al. 2011). The images are reduced

We report on an analysis of 308.3 hr of high-speed photometry targeting the pulsating DA white dwarf EC14012-1446. The data were acquired with the Whole Earth Telescope during the 2008 international observing run XCOV26. The Fourier transform of the light curve contains 19 independent frequencies and numerous combination frequencies. The dominant

We report on recent IR observations of the Be/X-ray binary system SAX J2103.5+4545/ CGS 03588-00834, obtained with the 1.52 m Carlos Sánchez Telescope (Observatorio de Izaña, Tenerife, Spain), and on the evolution of the H-alpha equivalent width for this system measured with the spectrograph Albireo, at the 1.5 m telescope of the Observatorio de

We briefly review an important shortcoming—unearthed in previous works—of the standard version of the inflationary model for the emergence of the seeds of cosmic structure. We consider here some consequences emerging from a proposal inspired on ideas of Penrose and Diósi [R. Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind. Concerning Computers, Minds and Laws of