Telescope enclosures are used to limit the disturbance caused by the wind on the pointing and tracking performances of telescopes and to preserve primary mirror optical shape. Within the framework of the EC program "ELT Design Study - Contract No. 011863", extended wind tunnel test have been performed to characterize wind turbulent structure inside

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The VLTI Spectro Imager (VSI) was proposed as a second-generation instrument of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer providing the ESO community with spectrally-resolved, near-infrared images at angular resolutions down to 1.1 milliarcsecond and spectral resolutions up to R = 12000. Targets as faint as K = 13 will be imaged without requiring a

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We put limits on the time variation of the electron mass in the early universe using observational primordial abundances of D, 4He, and 7Li, recent data from the cosmic microwave background, and the 2dFGRS power spectrum. Furthermore, we use these constraints together with other astronomical and geophysical bounds from the late universe to test the

We study the color structure of disk galaxies in the Groth strip at redshifts 0.1 z 1.2. Our aim is to test formation models in which bulges form before/after the disk. We find smooth color distributions with gentle outward blueing across the galaxy image: bulges are not distinctly redder than their disks; and bulge colors strongly correlate with