Context. The star HD 49385 is the first G-type solar-like pulsator observed in the seismology field of the space telescope CoRoT. The satellite collected 137 days of high-precision photometric data on this star, confirming that it presents solar-like oscillations. HD 49385 was also observed in spectroscopy with the NARVAL spectrograph in January

The picture of building the Milky Way halo from the merger of protogalactic fragments is considered the local manifestation of the hierarchical galaxy formation process. In this scenario, some studies have suggested that the outer young Galactic halo globular cluster population might be connected to the tidal disruption of dwarf spheroidals

CoRoT-9b is the first temperate transiting exoplanet. With a semi-major axis of 0.41 AU on a quasi-circular orbit, this is the first transiting planet far enough from its parent star to have an extended Hill sphere (3.5 million kilometers in radius), as needed to form and sustain rings and satellites. CoRoT-9b is thus the most promising planet

Because of the high quality of its sky, the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM), located on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, is home to many astronomical facilities. In the context of the Extremely Large Telescope Design Study, two intensive lidar campaigns were performed at the ORM near the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope between 2007

Photometric scaling relations are studied for S0 galaxies and compared with those obtained for spirals. New two-dimensional multi-component decompositions are presented for 122 early-type disc galaxies, using deep Ks-band images. Combining them with our previous decompositions, the final sample consists of 175 galaxies (Near-Infrared Survey of S0s

Context. Recent progress in the seismic interpretation of field β Cep stars has resulted in improvements of the physics in the stellar structure and evolution models of massive stars. Further asteroseismic constraints can be obtained from studying ensembles of stars in a young open cluster, which all have similar age, distance and chemical