Hot subdwarf stars (hot sds) are blue subluminous objects at high galactic latitudes. They split into two well-separated spectroscopic sequences: the O (sdOs) and B-type (sdBs), according to composition and effective temperature. As they are immediate progenitors of white dwarfs (WDs), this resembles the spectroscopic H (DA)/He (DB) distinction

Although dwarf elliptical galaxies are the dominant galaxy population in nearby clusters, their origin and nature remain a mystery. The main aim of this project is to compare the dynamical properties and star formation histories of a sample of dwarf ellipticals in the Virgo cluster with those of the classical elliptical galaxies. In particular

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Between 2000 June and September an exceptional variability phase occurred in the peculiar F-type hypergiant Rho Cas, when the V-brightness dimmed by at least a full magnitude. The star recovered from this deep minimum by 2001 April. It is the third outburst of Rho Cas on record in the last century. We observe TiO absorption bands in high-resolution

New results on the mid-IR emission of Seyfert galaxies are presented. The observations were performed using the TIMMI-2 instrument at the 3.6 m ESO telescope. We have obtained diffraction-limited images. In some cases the emission can be resolved and varies with wavelength. The relevance for these studies for CANARICAM is briefly discussed.

The techniques and software tools developed for the reduction and analysis of ISO-CAM/PHOT data with the LARI method are presented together with some highlights from the results obtained thanks to their application to different fields. Designed for the detection of faint sources in ISO raster observations, such method is based on the assumption of