Ks-band images of 20 barred galaxies show an increase in the peak amplitude of the normalized m=2 Fourier component with the R25-normalized radius at this peak. This implies that longer bars have higher m=2 amplitudes. The long bars also correlate with an increased density in the central parts of the disks, as measured by the luminosity inside 0

The paper describes the different methods, used in the MAGIC experiment, to unfold experimental energy distributions of cosmic ray particles (γ-rays). Questions and problems related to the unfolding are discussed. Various procedures are proposed which can help to make the unfolding robust and reliable. The different methods and procedures are

Aims:X-ray sources at intermediate fluxes (a few × 10-14 erg cm-2 s-1) with a sky density of ~100 deg-2 are responsible for a significant fraction of the cosmic X-ray background at various energies below 10 keV. The aim of this paper is to provide an unbiased and quantitative description of the X-ray source population at these fluxes and in various

We present the first detailed imaging polarization observations of six SMC and six LMC clusters, known to have large populations of B-type stars that exhibit excess Hα emission from 2-CD photometric studies, to constrain the evolutionary status of these stars and hence better establish links between the onset of disk formation in classical Be stars

SDSS DR6 includes about 300,000 stellar spectra, and a significant fraction of them belong to members of the halo. We make use of these data to examine closely the shape of the halo metallicity distribution. Does it have a single peak? Is it bimodal? Does it offer any clues on its formation and evolution?

We present the rationale, first observations and preliminary results of our radial velocity search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. So far we have obtained 2.5 nights (1.5 already done, 2 half nights pending) of Keck NASA time to collect high-resolution near-infrared spectra using NIRSPEC on the KECK II telescope. Our sample consists of 80 nearby