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

We study three high magnification microlensing events, generally recognized as probable caustic crossings, in the optical light curves of the multiply imaged quasar Q2237+0305. We model the light curve of each event as the convolution of a standard thin disk luminosity profile with a straight fold caustic. We also allow for a linear gradient that