A candidate diffuse stellar substructure was previously reported in the halo of the nearby dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 4449 by Karachentsev et al. We map and analyze this feature using a unique combination of deep integrated-light images from the BlackBird 0.5 m telescope, and high-resolution wide-field images from the 8 m Subaru Telescope, which

The aims of this Working Group are:•To ensure that scientific symposia on planetary nebulae take place regularly, ideally every 5 years. These symposia would preferably be sponsored by the IAU•To organize and coordinate the Joint Discussions on the subject at the IAU General Assemblies. These discussions should address topics of interest not only

Our Working Group (WG) studies massive, luminous stars, both individually and in resolved and unresolved populations, with historical focus on early-type (OB) stars, A-supergiants, and Wolf-Rayet stars. Our group also studies lower mass stars (e.g., central stars of planetary nebulae and their winds) which display features similar or related to

The solar activity cycle entered a prolonged quiet phase that started in 2008 and ended in 2010. This minimum lasted for a year longer than expected and all activity proxies, as measured from Earth and from Space, reached minimum values never observed before (de Toma, 2012). The number of spotless days from 2006 to 2009 totals 800, the largest ever

Aims: We revisit the scaling relations and star-forming histories of local elliptical galaxies using a novel selection method applied to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7. Methods: We combine two probability-based automated spectroscopic and morphological classifications of ~600 000 galaxies with z 0.25 to isolate true elliptical galaxies. Our

On March 27.2UT CRTS discovered transient CSS120327:110520-015205 in data taken by the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) Schmidt telescope (Drake et al. 2012, ATel#4011). Upon inspection of SDSS DR8 data a faint host galaxy was found with magnitudes u=20.7, g=19.7, r=19.3, i=19.1 and z= 18.9.