Most, if not all, disk galaxies have a thin (classical) disk and a thick disk. In most models thick disks are thought to be a necessary consequence of the disk formation and/or evolution of the galaxy. We present the results of a study of the thick disk properties in a sample of carefully selected edge-on galaxies with types ranging from T = 3 to T

The Universidad Complutense of Madrid (UCM) has recently installed a high sensitivity video system to detect meteors. It is intended to study the entry in our atmosphere of interplanetary particles of mass greater than a gram. The station, not fully equipped yet, is a node of the national Spanish Fireball Network (SPMN) and includes cameras located

The science of extra-solar planets is one of the most rapidly changing areas of astrophysics and since 1995 the number of planets known has increased by almost two orders of magnitude. A combination of ground-based surveys and dedicated space missions has resulted in 560-plus planets being detected, and over 1200 that await confirmation. NASA's

We present ground-based MDM Observatory V-band and Spitzer/InfraRed Array Camera 3.6-?m-band photometric observations of the 72 representative galaxies of the SAURON survey. Galaxies in our sample probe the elliptical E, lenticular S0 and spiral Sa populations in the nearby Universe, both in field and cluster environments. We perform aperture

Searches for planets around giants represent an essential complement to 'traditional' surveys, because they furnish information about properties of planetary systems around stars that are the descendants of the A-F main sequence (MS) stars with masses as high as ~5 M⊙. As the stars evolve off the MS, their effective temperatures and rotation rates

We present azimuthally averaged radial profiles of R-band surface brightness for a complete sample of 47 early-type, unbarred galaxies, as a complement to our previous study of early-type barred galaxies. Following very careful sky subtraction, the profiles can typically be determined down to brightness levels well below 27 mag arcsec-2 and in the