During two years since the beginning of operation, the MAGIC telescope could observe several GRB events in the prompt and early afterglow phase. Thanks to its innovative design, the telescope could promptly react to incoming GCN alerts, rapidly slew to the burst coordinates within on average 45 seconds, performing observations with an energy

As the present study was progressing, we started a campaign of spectroscopic follow-up of the Hα emitters detected by IPHAS. Accordingly a dozen candidate symbiotic stars, selected as described in the next sections, were observed at the INT using the IDS spectrograph, on nights of May 11, June 14, and September 9, 2006. (1 data file).

We have carried out a concept study for a wide-field monolithic integral field unit (IFU) spectrograph for extremely large telescopes (ELTs). We target in this paper the technological challenges that have to be faced in order to build such an instrument, focusing on the adaptive optics (AO) requirements, the image slicer technology, and the

Asteroid 944 Hidalgo is suspected of being an extinct comet. Understanding the origin of this enigmatic object is relevant to several areas of planetary astronomy, and the study of its surface composition may be diagnostic of its origin. Silicates have been detected in active comets, and on Jupiter Trojans. Our team investigated Hidalgo in the 8-30

Recent high-resolution observations have pointed out that prominences are made of small threads (also named fibrils) piled up to form the body of the prominence. These fine structures also seem to support their own oscillatory modes, while their effect on the global modes of the prominences are less certain. We study the effect of adding a smooth

The Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescope was designed for the detection of photon sources >~50 GeV. The measurement of highly-inclined air showers renders possible the search for high-energy neutrinos, too. Only neutrinos can traverse the Earth without interaction, and therefore, events close to the horizon can be identified