The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, explores the stellar populations of the Milky Way using the Sloan 2.5-m telescope linked to a high resolution (R ∼ 22,500), near-infrared (1.51–1.70 μm) spectrograph with 300 optical fibers. For over 150,000 predominantly red giant branch

Using the spectroscopic catalogue of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 10, we have explored the abundance of satellites around a sample of 254 massive (1011 M⋆ 2 × 1011 M⊙) local (z 0.025) galaxies. We have divided our sample into four morphological groups (E, S0, Sa, Sb/c). We find that the number of satellites with M⋆ ≳ 109 M⊙ and R 3

Swift J1357.2-0933 is one of the shortest orbital period black hole X-ray transients. It exhibited deep optical dips together with an extremely broad H α line during outburst. We present 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) time-resolved spectroscopy during quiescence searching for donor star absorption features. The large contribution of the

We present new mid-infrared (mid-IR) N-band spectroscopy and Q-band photometry of the local luminous IR galaxy NGC 1614, one of the most extreme nearby starbursts. We analyse the mid-IR properties of the nucleus (central 150 pc) and four regions of the bright circumnuclear (diameter˜600 pc) star-forming (SF) ring of this object. The nucleus differs

Context. Light bridges are convective intrusions in sunspots that often show enhanced chromospheric activity. Aims: We seek to determine the nature of flux emergence in a light bridge and the processes related to its evolution in the solar atmosphere. Methods: We analyse a sequence of high-resolution spectropolarimetric observations of a sunspot