Aims: The role of galaxy mergers in massive galaxy evolution, and in particular to mass assembly and size growth, remains an open question. In this paper we measure the merger fraction and rate, both minor and major, of massive early-type galaxies (M ⋆ ≥ 1011 M&sun;) in the COSMOS field, and study their role in mass and size evolution. Methods: We

A large ground-based spectroscopic and photometric programme has accompanied the asteroseismological photometric observations of the satellite CoRoT since its launch. These simultaneously complementary observations allow to better characterize the targets, identify the modes and recover many other interesting physical information. In this paper

We present measurements of galaxy clustering from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III). These use the Data Release 9 (DR9) CMASS sample, which contains 264 283 massive galaxies covering 3275 square degrees with an effective redshift z = 0.57 and redshift range 0.43 z 0.7

Spectroscopy of asteroids can be diagnostic of their surface composition and other properties such as internal structure. The European Space Agency's Gaia mission will result in a dramatic increase in the number and quality of asteroid spectra in the 0.35–0.9 μm wavelength range. This homogeneous set of spectra, with high sensitivity in the near

The prototype SONG node, SONG-OT, is currently being installed and tested at Observatory del Teide on Tenerife. SONG will be a global network of 1-m robotic telescopes, equipped with a high-resolution échelle spectrograph and dual-colour lucky imaging cameras. The network will be devoted to the seismic study of bright stars and characterisation of

Aims: We investigate the impact on Fe abundance determination of including magnetic flux in series of 3D radiation-magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations of solar convection, which we used to synthesize spectral intensity profiles corresponding to disc centre. Methods: A differential approach is used to quantify the changes in theoretical