The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a project for a next-generation observatory for very high energy (GeV-TeV) ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, currently in its design phase, and foreseen to be operative a few years from now. Several tens of telescopes of 2-3 different sizes, distributed over a large area, will allow for a sensitivity about a

We measure the flux values in the 4 Spitzer-IRAC bands, of a sample of 78 isolated luminous HII regions in the grand design galaxy M100. We estimate the near-IR luminosities and compare them with the Hα-luminosities from the Knapen HII-region catalogue. We find a strong, and expected positive correlation between the total IR luminosity and the Hα

High-resolution H-band spectra of five bright field K, M, and MS giants, obtained from the archives of the Kitt Peak National Observatory Fourier transform spectrometer, are analyzed to determine chemical abundances of 16 elements. The abundances were derived via spectrum synthesis using the detailed linelist prepared for the Sloan Digital Sky

The detection of multiple mode harmonic kink oscillations in coronal loops enables us to obtain information on coronal density stratification and magnetic field expansion using seismology inversion techniques. The inference is based on the measurement of the period ratio between the fundamental mode and the first overtone and theoretical results

We recently discovered an apparently new class of pulsating Extreme Horizontal Branch (EHB) star in ω Cen. Tightly clustered around ˜50,000 K, these H-rich sdO stars exhibit rapid, multi-periodic oscillations on a timescale of 100 s. While four such objects have been detected in ω Cen, no counterparts have yet been found among the field population

Stellar-mass black holes (BHs) are mostly found in X-ray transients, a subclass of X-ray binaries that exhibit violent outbursts. None of the 50 Galactic BHs known show eclipses, which is surprising for a random distribution of inclinations. Swift J1357.2-0933 is a very faint X-ray transient detected in 2011. On the basis of spectroscopic evidence