The bright nebular complex NGC 6334 contains some of the most active sites of massive star formation known in our Galaxy. It is located at a distance from the Sun of 1.62 kpc and has a total mass of a few 10^5~M_&sun;. The physical characteristics of the active spots range widely, from well developed expanding HII regions to deeply embedded, still

13 out of 48 nova-likes in the 2.8-4 h orbital period range are eclipsing SW Sex stars - these are all the eclipsing cataclysmic variables (CVs) in this range. Apparently, SW Sex stars are very frequent and probably represent an important stage in CV evolution, as they densely gather just above the period gap and exhibit extremely high mass

Recent Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) observations revealed the presence of a double subgiant branch (SGB) in the core of the Galactic globular cluster NGC 1851. This peculiarity was tentatively explained by the presence of a second population with either an age difference of about 1 Gyr, or a higher C+N+O abundance

We present the first results of a ground-based program to determine the proper motion of the Magellanic Clouds (MCs) relative to background quasars (QSO), being carried out using the Iréneé du Pont 2.5 m telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. Eleven QSO fields have been targeted in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) over a time base of six

We study the morphology and masses of extremely red galaxies (EROs) within the GOYA survey (Galaxy Origins and Young Assembly), by combining optical data (UBVI) with near-infrared data (JKs). The initial K-band selected catalogue contains some 2500 sources over 4.5 arcmin2, of which 113 sources have F814W-Ks>=4 and are classified as EROs. In order

We describe the status of our long-term radial velocity (RV) survey of a sample of 1000 GK-giants with the 9.2-m Hobby-Eberly Telescope and its High Resolution Spectrograph, in search for planetary-mass companions. The survey uses the I2 cell calibration method to achieve a 4-6 m s-1 precision of RV measurements, which is quite sufficient, given