Ks-band images of 20 barred galaxies show an increase in the peak amplitude of the normalized m=2 Fourier component with the R25-normalized radius at this peak. This implies that longer bars have higher m=2 amplitudes. The long bars also correlate with an increased density in the central parts of the disks, as measured by the luminosity inside 0

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A ring-diagram analysis of solar oscillations has been applied to a 3 day time series of full-disk Doppler images obtained at Mount Wilson. A model of the three-dimensional power spectrum assuming a Lorentzian profile in frequency and the advection of the wave front by horizontal flows has been fitted to the observed spectrum. The model provides

Aims: We derive the vertical velocities of disk stars in the range of Galactocentric radii of R = 5 - 16 kpc within 2 kpc in height from the Galactic plane. This kinematic information is connected to dynamical aspects in the formation and evolution of the Milky Way, such as the passage of satellites and vertical resonance and determines whether the

The flat-spectrum radio quasar PKS 1441+25 at a redshift of z = 0.940 is detected between 40 and 250 GeV with a significance of 25.5σ using the MAGIC telescopes. Together with the gravitationally lensed blazar QSO B0218+357 (z = 0.944), PKS 1441+25 is the most distant very high energy (VHE) blazar detected to date. The observations were triggered

M 87 is the only known non blazar radio galaxy to emit very high energy (VHE) gamma-rays. During a monitoring program of M 87, a rapid flare in VHE gamma-rays was detected by the MAGIC telescope in early 2008. The flux was found to be variable above 350 GeV on atimescaleas short as 1 day at a significance level of 5.6σ. The highest measured flux