We have used a combination of optical absorption spectroscopy, 21 cm HI mapping, and millimetric CO mapping, to explore the fine structure of the ISM clouds within 200 pc of the sun. We find examples of molecular cores within cold atomic clouds, cold atomic clouds within warm ionized clouds, and warm ionized clouds without cold cores (using

Most of the information concerning the ionized gas and star kinematics in the central regions of galaxies is 1-Dimensional. This hampers the study of the velocity fields, specially for the ionized gas which in many cases exhibits a kinematics strongly decoupled from that of the stars. Here we present the velocity fields for the ionized gas and the

We present CO J = 1-> observations of the S0 galaxy NGC 404 obtained using the Nobeyama Millimeter Array. The spatial and velocity resolutions are 4' ' and 5 km s-1. The central part of the galaxy shows a highly concentrated rotationless source with properties typical of a Giant Molecular Association. This structure is compatible with either a

The GOLF experiment is a resonant scattering spectrophotometer in flight on board the SOHO mission, originally designed to measure the intensity of the solar radiation at 4 selected positions within the sodium doublet (D1 at λ 5896 and D2 at λ 5890 AA). Each position was determined by a modulated magnetic field and a combination of rotating

Recent searches for brown dwarfs have succeeded in finding these elusive objects. Massive brown dwarfs (40-70 Jupiter masses) have been found in the Pleiades, orbiting around a nearby star and, very recently, in the field. A review is given of their observed photometric and spectroscopic properties in the optical and near-infrared. The diagnosis of