Building on the legacy of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-I and II), SDSS-III is a program of four spectroscopic surveys on three scientific themes: dark energy and cosmological parameters, the history and structure of the Milky Way, and the population of giant planets around other stars. In keeping with SDSS tradition, SDSS-III will provide

The Magellanic Clouds (MCs) offer a unique opportunity to study the stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis of massive Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars in low metallicity environments where distances are known. Rubidium is a key element to distinguish between high mass AGB stars and low mass AGB stars or other types of astronomical objects such as

The Penn State - Torun Planet Search (PTPS) performed with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope is devoted to search and characterization of extrasolar planetary systems around evolved stars. For complete description of these systems detailed knowledge of their suns is essential. Therefore, in parallel to the planet search we perform a complete spectroscopic

The Local Group galaxies enable us to study the impact of metallicity on the structure and evolution of massive stars through spectroscopic analyses. However, color-based target selection for spectroscopy (in absence of known spectral types), though relatively successful, usually produces lists dominated by B-type modest-mass stars. We have

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The European Solar Telescope (EST) is a European collaborative project promoted by the European Association for Solar Telescopes (EAST) to build a high resolution 4m class solar telescope in the Canary Islands. Since 2008 to 2011 a Design Study has been developed to define the Conceptual Design of EST. During the Design Study, several preliminary