We present the discovery of an L0 companion to the nearby M1.5 dwarf G 239-25, at a projected distance of 31 AU. It is the faintest companion discovered so far in our adaptive optics survey of all known M dwarfs within 12 pc, and it lies at the stellar/substellar limit. Given the assumed age of the primary star, the companion is likely an extremely

We investigate the nature of the substantial population of high-redshift galaxies with Js-Ks>=2.3 colors recently discovered as part of our Faint Infrared Extragalactic Survey (FIRES). This color cut efficiently isolates galaxies at z>2 with red rest-frame optical colors (``distant red galaxies'' [DRGs]). We select Js-Ks>=2.3 objects in both FIRES

This paper discusses the properties of the European Large Area ISO Survey (ELAIS) 15-μm quasars and tries to establish a robust method of quasar selection for future use within the Spitzer Wide-Area Infrared Extragalactic Survey (SWIRE) framework. The importance of good-quality ground-based optical data is stressed, both for the selection of

We present Very Large Telescope (VLT) UVES echelle spectrophotometry of the Orion nebula in the 3100-10400 Årange. We have measured the intensity of 555 emission lines, many of them corresponding to permitted lines of different heavy-element ions. This is the largest set of spectral emission lines ever obtained for a Galactic or extragalactic HII

We propose to observe the peculiar neutron star low mass X-ray binary (NS/LMXB) 2S 1803-245 in quiescence. Together with EXO 1745-248, it is the only transient that reached peak luminosities comparable to the Eddington- limit. This makes 2S 1803-245 one of the thermally brightest NSs in quiescence according to the cooling theory, and therefore one

The statistics of vertical structure of the turbulence affect the complexity of the design and implementation of Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) systems. The operation of these systems could be optimized if the stability of the layers were such as to permit to fix the deformable mirrors (DMs) at specific heights. Moreover, it is desirable to