We describe a deep multi-colour NIR survey (TCS-CAIN) that has been recently completed at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Spain). The survey is of selected areas distributed along the Galactic plane and it goes deeper than 2MASS or DENIS. Its aim was to explore the large-scale structure of the Milky Way and the Galactic components, in

SUNRISE is an international project for the development, construction, and operation of a balloon-borne solar telescope with an aperture of 1 m, working in the UV/VIS spectral domain. The main scientific goal of SUNRISE is to understand the structure and dynamics of the magnetic field in the atmosphere of the Sun. SUNRISE will provide near

The yoke of an alt-az telescope should provide a stiff interface between the azimuth journal and the tube of the telescope. The stiffness of the yoke affects the performance of the telescope servosystem and its mass has an important contribution on the total weight of the telescope. Based on the design of the yoke of the GTC 10m telescope, a new

EMIR is the NIR multi-object imager and spectrograph for the GTC (Gran Telescopio Canarias). The instrument ADR (Advanced Design Review) was held successfully in March 2006. During the AD phase, a number of mechanical concepts were tested on development prototypes to ensure the feasibility of the PDR proposed designs. This presentation contains an

A model for diffusion-controlled spherical particle growth is presented and solved numerically, showing how, on cooling at sufficient rate from a given fraction solid, growth velocity first increases, and then decreases rapidly when solute fields of adjacent particles overlap. An approximate analytical solution for the spherical particle growth

We report on optical spectroscopy of Swift J1933.9+3258 (=1RXS J193347.6+325422). This X-ray source has recently been classified as a likely radio-quiet AGN on the basis of its broad-band (radio, optical, UV, X-ray) properties (Grupe et al. 2006, ATel #859). In order to confirm its nature, a single 7-min spectrum of the optical counterpart was