Studies of the mass function (MF) of open clusters of different ages allow us to probe the efficiency with which brown dwarfs (BDs) are evaporated from clusters to populate the field. Surveys in old clusters (age gtrsim 100 Myr) do not suffer so severely from several problems encountered in young clusters, such as intra-cluster extinction and large

The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey (VFTS) has secured mid-resolution spectra of over 300 O-type stars in the 30 Doradus region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. A homogeneous analysis of such a large sample requires automated techniques, an approach that will also be needed for the upcoming analysis of the Gaia surveys of the Northern and Southern

The relationship between the emission of coronal lines (CLs) and nuclear activity in 36 Type 1 and 18 Type 2 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is analyzed, for the first time, based on near-infrared (0.8-2.4 μm) spectra. The eight CLs studied, of Si, S, Fe, Al, and Ca elements and corresponding to ionization potentials (IPs) in the range 125-450 eV

The mass of CoRoT-7b, the first transiting super-Earth exoplanet, is still a subject of debate. A wide range of masses have been reported in the literature ranging from as high as 8 M ⊕ to as low as 2.3 M ⊕. This range in mass is largely due to the activity level of the star that contributes a significant amount of radial velocity (RV) "jitter" and

The spectral line polarization produced by optically pumped atoms contains a wealth of information on the thermal and magnetic structure of a variety of astrophysical plasmas, including that of the solar atmosphere. A correct decoding of such information from the observed Stokes profiles requires a clear understanding of the effects that

We present the IACOB grid-based automatic tool for the quantitative spectroscopic analysis of O-stars. The tool consists of an extensive grid of FASTWIND models, and a variety of programs implemented in IDL to handle the observations, perform the automatic analysis, and visualize the results. The tool provides a fast and objective way to determine