Aims: Current and upcoming space missions may be able to detect moons of transiting extra-solar planets. In this context it is important to understand if exomoons are expected to exist and what their possible properties are. Methods: Using estimates for the stability of exomoon orbits from numerical studies, a list of 87 known transiting exoplanets

We analyse the skewness of the line-of-sight velocity distributions in model elliptical galaxies built through collisionless galaxy mergers. We build the models using large N-body simulations of mergers between either two spiral or two elliptical galaxies. Our aim is to investigate whether the observed ranges of skewness coefficient (h3) and the

We compute the spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) arising during the epoch of cosmological hydrogen recombination within the standard cosmological (concordance) model for frequencies in the range 1-3500 GHz. We follow the evolution of the populations of the hydrogen levels including states up to principle quantum number n

Polarimetry constitutes one of the fundamental tools for characterizing the surface texture and composition of airless Solar System bodies. In 2006, polarimetric observations led to the discovery of a new type of asteroids, which displays a peculiar polarimetric response. These asteroids are collectively known as "Barbarians", from (234) Barbara

LIRIS is an Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) project that consists in a near-infrared (0.9-2.4microns) intermediate resolution spectrograph, conceived as a common user instrument for the WHT. LIRIS will have imaging, long-slit and multi-object spectroscopy observing modes (~1000-3000 Å). Coronography, and polarimetry capabilities will

Context: Most globular clusters are believed to host a single stellar population. They can thus be considered a good place to study the Spite plateau and to search for possible evolutionary modifications of the Li content. Aims: We want to determine the Li content of subgiant (SG) and main sequence (MS) stars of the old, metal-poor globular cluster