AGB stars, in particular those of carbon types, are excellent laboratories to constraint the theory of stellar structure, evolution and nucleosynthesis. Despite the uncertainties still existing in the chemical analysis of these stars, the determination of the abundances of several key species in their atmospheres (lithium, s-elements, carbon and

We are currently undertaking a systematic search of new Galactic planetary nebulae (PNe) in the IPHAS (INT Photometric H-Alpha Survey) data. We employ two methods to search for PNe of different sizes: a visual search through continuum subtracted H-Alpha mosaics for extended PNe and a (point) source catalog based search for small diameter PNe. Here

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The Faulkes Telescope Project is the educational arm of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT). It currently has two 2-metre robotic telescopes, located at Haleakala on Maui (FT North) and Siding Spring in Australia (FT South). It is planned to increase this to six 2-metre telescopes in the future, complemented by a network of

Superjupiters are much brigther when they are young and still contracting, and the contrast with the harboring stars is significantly more favorable for their detection. Within the JOVIAN (Jupiter-like Objects in the Visible and the Infrared: Astrophysical Nature) project, a search has been performed for superjupiters around nearby young stars

We present the main results derived from a chemical abundance analysis carried out on a large sample of massive galactic O-rich AGB stars (M > 3-4 M_&sun;). Combining these results with previous studies made on a similar sample of luminous AGB stars belonging to the Magellanic Clouds we provide strong observational evidences that metallicity