Dynamical arguments indicate that 944 Hidalgo is most likely an extinct or dormant comet. Hidalgo's Tisserand invariant (T = 2.07) suggests strongly that this object came either from the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud (e.g., Weissman et al. 2002). We obtained low-resolution near-infrared spectra in the 0.8-2.4 micron region on UT Oct 22, 23, Nov 19

We present first results obtained from our spectroscopic survey of near-Earth objects (NEOSS), comprising a total of 102 visible and near-infrared spectra of asteroids. Visible data have been recorded with the 2.5-m Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), while near-infrared spectra have been taken at 3.5-m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, both telescopes

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Dependence of phenomenological properties of Cepheids on the heavy element abundance is studied. It is found that the amplitude of the pulsation depends on the metallicity of the stellar atmosphere.

A new stellar library developed for stellar population synthesis modelling is presented. The library consists of 985 stars spanning a large range in atmospheric parameters. The spectra were obtained at the 2.5-m Isaac Newton Telescope and cover the range λλ 3525-7500 Å at 2.3 Å (full width at half-maximum) spectral resolution. The spectral