This book is a collection of papers by four internationally known speakers who explore some key areas in solar physics. O. von der Lühe discusses new techniques that are being developed for observing the sun at high spatial resolution and which have played a key role in most of the recent discoveries about the Sun. Egidio Landi Degl'Innocenti

An analysis of 50 optical spectra of the interstellar methylidyne ion in the direction of HD26676 and HD149038 derived very similar interstellar isotopic ratios for the two lines-of-sight. A lack of a Galactic gradient in isotopic ratios is noted which is consistent with the location in the solar vicinity of the gas in front of HD149038. The

Irradiance measurements from the IPHIR instrument flown on the Phobos 2 mission to Mars are used to derive phase differences and gains between broadband relative irradiance signals and full-disk velocity variations for l = 0, 1, and 2 mode with order ranging from 12 to 32. These data are compared with contemporaneous measurements of photospheric

Infrared photometry in the J, H and K bands, performed on a sample of 33 blue stragglers (BS) belonging to 8 open clusters is presented. This photometry has been combined with published Johnson UBV photometry to search for possible cold companions among the BS, as expected for Case B close binary evolution. Probable binaries were identified by

Spectrophotometric observations in the optical and near-infrared of six giant H II regions in the high metallicity spiral galaxy M51 are presented. Five of the regions are located in the spiral arms, and the sixth one is very close to the nucleus. These observations and the application of adequate photo-ionization models allow the determination of

The identification of the Jovian frequency spectrum obtained by Schmider et al. (1990, 1991) is proposed from Doppler shift observations of the solar sodium D line reflected by the planet, as a signature of Jovian global-pressure modes. The spectrum, derived from 4 nights of observations, presents high-amplitude peaks whose origin in undoubtedly