At the First International Conference on Comet Hale-Bopp (Canaries, 1998) many astronomers agreed with the value of the period of axial rotation of its nucleus, which was obtained by observers by a comparison of the two sequential patterns of the dust arcs. It was noted that the pattern had been repeated each ~12 hours. The value 11.35 h was taken

Globular cluster systems of 17 elliptical galaxies have been studied in the Coma Cluster of galaxies. Surface-brightness fluctuations have been used to determine total populations of globular clusters, and specific frequency (SN) has been evaluated for each individual galaxy. Enormous differences in SN between similar galaxies are found. In

M32 is the prototype for the relatively rare class of galaxies referred to as compact ellipticals. It has been suggested that M32 may be a tidally disturbed r1/4 elliptical galaxy or the remnant bulge of a disk-stripped early-type spiral galaxy. This Letter reveals that the surface brightness profile, the velocity dispersion measurements, and the

HR1217 is a prototypical rapidly oscillating Ap star that has presented a test to the theory of non-radial stellar pulsation. Prior observations showed a clear pattern of five modes with alternating frequency spacings of 33.3 and 34.6μHz, with a sixth mode at a problematic spacing of 50.0μHz (which equals to the high-frequency side. Asymptotic

In this letter, we report the discovery of the first young early L-dwarf in the Serpens cloud. It is obscured by more than ten magnitudes of visual absorption and was found during a near infrared (NIR) photometric survey of a 50 square arcmin area in the Serpens cloud, deep enough to probe the substellar domain. After selection from NIR colour

We introduce our observational study of the orbital motion and the intrinsic variability of the double-lined spectroscopic binary beta Cen. Using 463 high signal-to-noise, high-resolution spectra obtained over a timespan of 12 years it is shown that the radial velocity of beta Cen varies with an orbital period of 357.0 days. We derive for the first