The European Space Agency has built an optical ground station sited at the Observatorio del Teide operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. This station, equipped with a 1m telescope, has a multipurpose configuration for in-orbit commissioning and checkout of laser communication payloads. Since November 2001, the bidirectional link with

We have compiled a catalogue of light curve solutions of contact binary stars. It contains the results of 159 light curve solutions. The properties of contact binary stars were studied using the catalogue data. As is well known since Lucy's (\cite{Lucy68a},b) and Mochnacki's (\cite{Mochnacki81}) studies, primary components transfer their own energy

We present the results of a double analysis of the ionizing cluster in NGC 588, a giant HII region (GHR) in the outskirts of the nearby galaxy M 33. For this purpose, we obtained ground based long-slit spectroscopy and combined it with archival ground based and space borne imaging and spectroscopy, in the wavelength range 1100-9800 Å. A first

Three different maps of the quiet Sun, observed with the Advanced Stokes Polarimeter (ASP) and the Diffraction-Limited Stokes Polarimeter (DLSP), show evidence of strong (~=1700 G) and weak (

TNOs (50000) Quaoar and 2002 TX300 were observed in the framework of a long-term program to study the surface properties of TNOs, Centaurs and comet nuclei using the Italian 3.58 m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) at "El Roque de los Muchachos" Observatory (La Palma, Spain). Near-infrared spectra of both TNOs and visible spectrum of 2002 TX300

We present a cross-correlation of the European Large Area Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) survey (ELAIS) with the ELAIS Deep X-ray Survey of the N1 and N2 fields. There are seven Chandra point sources with matches in the ELAIS Final Analysis 15-μm catalogue, out of a total of 28 extragalactic ISO sources present in the Chandra fields. Five of