We report the discovery of a new hysteresis effect in black hole X-ray binary state transitions, that of the near-infrared (NIR) flux (which most likely originates in the jets) versus X-ray flux. We find, looking at existing data sets, that the IR emission of black hole X-ray transients appears to be weaker in the low/hard state rise of an outburst

The supernova SN 2006aj associated with GRB 060218 is the second-closest GRB-SN observed to date (z=0.033) and is the clearest example of a SN associated with a Swift GRB with the earliest optical spectroscopy. Its optical data showed that this is the fastest evolving and among the least luminous GRB-SNe (70% as luminous as SN1998bw). However, its

We present deep ground-based {it B} and {it R} observations of 12 fields in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The resulting color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) reach the oldest main-sequence (MS) turnoff at M$_{R}$$ hicksim$3.5 and reveal the stellar population differences between the part of the galaxy facing the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and an

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