Sunspot penumbrae exhibit prominent fine structure. Different interpretations of spectropolarimetric observations suggest different, sometimes contradictory, properties of this fine structure. In this paper we show that the results of inversions of penumbral infrared profiles based on one-component models with gradients of the atmospheric

Here we report on the first observational investigation of the Zeeman effect in the G band around 4305 Å. Our spectropolarimetric observations of sunspots with the Zürich Imaging Polarimeter at the Istituto Ricerche Solari Locarno confirm our previous theoretical prediction that the molecular Zeeman effect produces measurable circular polarization

Analysis of archival data from the BeppoSAX Wide Field Cameras has yielded further detections of superbursts. Remarkably, several are from a persistent low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) that radiates within a few tens of percent of the Eddington limit, in contrast to all other superbursts detected with BeppoSAX and RXTE which are from LMXBs radiating

We report simultaneous X-ray, optical, and radio observations of V404 Cyg in quiescence. The X-ray flux varied dramatically by a factor of >20 during a 60 ks observation. X-ray variations were well correlated with those in Hα , although the latter include an approximately constant component as well. Correlations can also be seen with the optical

Using polarimetry, at both visible and submillimeter wavelengths, we propose to study the role and to compare the structure of the magnetic fields within and near filamentary molecular clouds. The optical polarization data obtained at Mont Mégantic and from the Heiles catalog constrain the large scale topology of magnetic fields in the near

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