We present first results from our search for brown dwarf and giant planet companions around G and K type stars in the Upper Sco OB association. Our survey is designed to detect companions as faint as I=20 about 2 arcsec from the star. This sensitivity corresponds to 10MJ at 300 AU according to current evolutionary models. The host stars were

Starting in 2014 December, Kepler K 2 observed Neptune continuously for 49 days at a 1 minute cadence. The goals consisted of studying its atmospheric dynamics, detecting its global acoustic oscillations, and those of the Sun, which we report on here. We present the first indirect detection of solar oscillations in intensity measurements. Beyond

Context. We recently presented evidence that stable umbra-penumbra boundaries are characterised by a distinct canonical value of the vertical component of the magnetic field, Bstablever. In order to trigger the formation of a penumbra, large inclinations in the magnetic field are necessary. In sunspots, the penumbra develops and establishes by

We describe an experiment to measure calibration sources, the polarization of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) and the polarization induced on the CMBR from S-Z effects, using a polarimeter, MITOPol, that will be employed at the MITO telescope. Two modulation methods are presented and compared: an amplitude modulation with a Fresnel

A new method of calculating microlensing magnification patterns is proposed that is based on the properties of the backward gravitational lens mapping of a lattice of polygonal cells defined at the image plane. To a first-order approximation, the local linearity of the transformation allows us to compute the contribution of each image-plane cell to

We investigate the feasibility of detecting quiescent black hole X-ray binaries using optical photometric techniques. To test this, we employ a combination of r-band and H α filters currently available at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory. Photometric observations of four dynamical black holes (GRO J0422+320, A 0620-00, XTE J1118+480, and XTE