We study the dependence of the number density and properties of quasars on the background galaxy density using the currently largest spectroscopic data sets of quasars and galaxies. We construct a galaxy number density field smoothed over the variable smoothing scale of between approximately 10 and 20 h ‑1 Mpc over the redshift range 0.46 z 0.59

Asteroseismology has proven to be an excellent tool to determine not only global stellar properties with good precision, but also to infer the stellar structure, dynamics, and evolution for a large sample of Kepler stars. Prior to the launch of the mission, the properties of Kepler targets were inferred from broadband photometry, leading to the

The surface magnetic field has substantial influence on various stellar properties that can be probed through various techniques. With the advent of new space-borne facilities such as CoRoT and Kepler, uninterrupted long high-precision photometry is available for hundred of thousand of stars. This number will substantially grow through the

The inner asteroid belt is an important source of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). Dynamical studies of the inner asteroid belt have identified several families overlapping in proper orbital elements, including the Polana and Eulalia families that contain a large fraction of the low-albedo asteroids in this region. We present results from two

Linear polarization due to scattering processes can be used as a probe of the existence of atmospheric condensates in ultracool dwarfs. Models predict that the observed linear polarization increases with the degree of oblateness, which is inverse to the surface gravity.We aimed to measure optical linear polarization from a sample of six young brown

We analyse the planetary nebulae (PNe) population of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), based on evolutionary models of stars with metallicities in the range 10-3 ≤ Z ≤ 4 × 10-3 and mass 0.9 M⊙ M 8 M⊙, evolved through the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase. The models used account for dust formation in the circumstellar envelope. To characterize