We report the results of a photometric search for giant stars associated with the cores of four high-velocity clouds (HVCs)-two of which are compact HVCs-using the Las Campanas du Pont 2.5 m and Cerro Tololo Blanco 4 m telescopes in combination with a system of filters (Washington M, T2+DDO51) useful for identifying low surface gravity, evolved

Using the 770 ks XMM-Newton survey of the Lockman Hole field in combination with extensive optical identifications of the AGN population, we derive an average rest-frame spectrum of AGN types-1 and 2. The most prominent feature in the averaged spectrum is a strong fluorescent Fe line. In both type-1 and type-2 AGN, a clear relativistic line profile

BPM 37093 is the only hydrogen-atmosphere white dwarf currently known which has sufficient mass (~1.1 M&sun;) to theoretically crystallize while still inside the ZZ Ceti instability strip (Teff˜12 000 K). As a consequence, this star represents our first opportunity to test crystallization theory directly. If the core is substantially crystallized

We present deep multiband (F435W, F625W, and F658N) photometric data of the globular cluster ω Cen collected with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble Space Telescope. We identified in the (F435W - F625W, F435W)-plane more than 2000 white dwarf (WD) candidates using three out of nine available pointings. Such a large sample appears

The zero-age main-sequence star AB Dor and the K dwarf component of the V471 Tau close binary have essentially identical rotation rates and spectral types. An analysis of their high-resolution Chandra X-ray spectra reveals remarkably similar coronal characteristics in terms of both temperature structure and element abundances. Both stars show

We derive ages, metallicities, and abundance ratios ([α/Fe]) from the integrated spectra of 23 globular clusters in M31 by employing multivariate fits to two different stellar population models. We also perform a parallel analysis on 21 Galactic globular clusters as a consistency check and in order to facilitate a differential analysis. Our