We use the statistics of caustic crossings induced by microlensing in the lens system Q 2237+0305 to study the lens galaxy peculiar velocity. We calculate the caustic crossing rates for a comprehensive family of stellar mass functions and find a dependence of the average number of caustic crossings with the effective transverse velocity and the

A long and thorough investigation of chemical abundances of planet-hosting stars that lasted for more than a decade has finally beared fruit. We explore a sample of 148 solar-like stars to search for a possible correlation between the slopes of the abundance trends versus condensation temperature (known as the T_{c} slope) both with stellar

The open cluster NGC 6791 is among the oldest, most massive, and metal-rich open clusters in the Galaxy. High-resolution H-band spectra from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) of 11 red giants in NGC 6791 are analyzed for their chemical abundances of iron, oxygen, and sodium. The abundances of these three elements

Studies of galactic bulges in relation with bars have provided powerful constraints on their formation and evolution. While spectroscopic measurements in 2D have mainly focused on the interstellar component, two dimensional studies of the stellar counterpart have only become possible with the advent of integral-field spectroscopic surveys. Here we

Rotation is a key parameter in the evolution of massive stars, affecting their evolution, chemical yields, ionizing photon budget, and final fate. We determined the projected rotational velocity, υ e sin i, of ~330 O-type objects, i.e. ~210 spectroscopic single stars and ~110 primaries in binary systems, in the Tarantula nebula or 30 Doradus (30

Analysis of emission lines in gaseous nebulae yields direct measures of physical conditions and chemical abundances and is the cornerstone of nebular astrophysics. Although the physical problem is conceptually simple, its practical complexity can be overwhelming since the amount of data to be analyzed steadily increases; furthermore, results depend