Young stellar bars in disk galaxies experience a vertical buckling instability that terminates their growth and thickens them, resulting in a characteristic peanut/boxy shape when viewed edge-on. Using N-body simulations of galactic disks embedded in live halos, we have analyzed the bar structure throughout this instability and found that the outer

Early-type galaxies are thought to be among the oldest known stellar systems, and as such have experienced the full diversity of evolutionary mechanisms at work in the universe. They are crucial laboratories for understanding how galaxies form and evolve from early epochs until the present day. A key aspect of unlocking their fossil evidence is by

We present time-resolved optical spectroscopy and photometry, and far-ultraviolet spectroscopy of HS 0728+6738, a cataclysmic variable discovered in the Hamburg Quasar Survey. We show that the system is a new eclipsing member of the SW Sex class of CVs with an orbital period of 3.21 h. We derive an orbital inclination of ˜ 85 ± 4° from the average

Swift is a first-of-its-kind multiwavelength transient observatory for GRB astronomy. It has the optimum capabilities for the next breakthroughs in determining the origin of GRBs and their afterglows, as well as using bursts to probe the early Universe. Swift will also perform the first sensitive hard X-ray survey of the sky. The mission is being

We propose a wide-area, high latitude, imaging survey to trace the evolution of dusty, star-forming galaxies, evolved stellar populations, and AGN, as a function of environment from z~2.5 to the current epoch. Building on ISO's heritage, SWIRE complements smaller, deeper GTO (Guaranteed Time Observer) surveys, and paves the way for FIRST. With MIPS

In this paper we present multi-epoch observations of the pre-main-sequence binary HK Ori. These data have been drawn from the EXPORT data base and are complemented by high-quality spectro-astrometric data of the system. The spectroscopic data appear to be very well represented by a combination of an A dwarf star spectrum superposed on a (sub)giant