We report the discovery of a planetary nebula centered on the poorly studied symbiotic binary star DT Ser. In a few other symbiotic stars spatially resolved nebulae have been discovered as well, but only one of them probably is a genuine planetary nebula, while the others are likely to originate in complex mass-ejection episodes from the

We report on the finding of the strongest Hα emission - pseudoequivalent width of 705 Å- known so far in a young, late type dwarf. This object, named as S Ori 71, is a substellar candidate member of the 1-8 Myr star cluster sigma Orionis. Due to its overluminous location in color-magnitude diagrams, S Ori 71 might be younger than other cluster

We report on RXTE observations of the neutron star transient currently active in Terzan 5 (also known as IGR J17480-2446; ATels #2919, #2920, #2922, #2924, #2929, #2932, #2933, #2937, #2939, #2940, #2946), which has recently turned into a Z source (Altamirano et al., ATel #2952). The X-ray burst rate has increased gradually (see also ATels #2939,

Long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) at z < 1 are found in most cases to be accompanied by bright, broad-lined Type Ic supernovae (SNe Ic-BL). The highest-energy GRBs are mostly located at higher redshifts, where the associated SNe are hard to detect observationally. Here, we present early and late observations of the optical counterpart of the

The contact phase expected to precede the coalescence of two massive stars is poorly characterized due to the paucity of observational constraints. Here we report on the discovery of VFTS 352, an O-type binary in the 30 Doradus region, as the most massive and earliest spectral type overcontact system known to date. We derived the 3D geometry of the

Using the High Resolution Camera on board the Chandra X-ray Observatory, we have measured an accurate position for the bright persistent neutron star X-ray binary and atoll source GX 3+1. At a location that is consistent with this new position, we have discovered the near-infrared (NIR) counterpart to GX 3+1 in images taken with the PANIC and