We present optical photometry and spectroscopy of the X-ray transient XTE J1859+226, obtained during outburst and its subsequent decay to quiescence. Both the X-ray and optical properties are very similar to those of well-studied black hole soft X-ray transients. We have detected three mini-outbursts, when XTE J1859+226 was approaching quiescence

R-band surface photometry is presented for 171 late-type dwarf and irregular galaxies. For a subsample of 46 galaxies B-band photometry is presented as well. We present surface brightness profiles as well as isophotal and photometric parameters including magnitudes, diameters and central surface brightnesses. Absolute photometry is accurate to 0.1

We present UBVRI light curves of BL Lacertae from May 2000 to January 2001, obtained by 24 telescopes in 11 countries. More than 15 000 observations were performed in that period, which was the extension of the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT) campaign originally planned for July-August 2000. The exceptional sampling reached allows one to follow

We study the far-infrared emission properties of the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 253 based on IRAS maps and an ISOPHOT map at 180 μm. Based on the analysis of the light profiles, we have been able to identify three main structural components: an unresolved nuclear component, an exponential disk, and a kiloparsec-scale bar. In addition, we also

SAX J1711.6-3808 is an X-ray transient in the Galactic bulge that was active from January through May of 2001 and whose maximum 1-200 keV luminosity was measured to be 5x 10-9 erg cm-2 s-1 which is less than ~ 25% of the Eddington limit, if placed at a distance equal to that of the galactic center. We study the X-ray data that were taken of this

We have obtained linear polarization measurements of stars along the western side of the IRAS Vela Shell toward HD 62542. From 16 CCD fields distributed along the ionization front (I-front) we have built a catalog of 856 objects with polarization signal-to-noise ratio larger than 10. We detect very significant levels of polarization and hence an