The first science flight of the balloon-borne Sunrise telescope took place in June 2009 from ESRANGE (near Kiruna/Sweden) to Somerset Island in northern Canada. We describe the scientific aims and mission concept of the project and give an overview and a description of the various hardware components: the 1-m main telescope with its postfocus

We briefly outline the scientific and instrumental aspects of ESA's Solar Orbiter mission. Special emphasis is given to the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager, the instrument with the highest relevance for helioseismology applications, which will observe gas motions and the vector magnetic field in the photosphere at high spatial and temporal

One of the main drawbacks in the analysis of the dynamics of the solar core comes from the lack of consistent data sets that cover the low and intermediate degree range (ell = 1,200). It is usually necessary to merge data obtained from different instruments and/or fitting methodologies and hence one introduces undesired systematic errors. In

We present inferences of the internal solar rotation rate and its evolution during solar cycle 23. A full solar cycle of MDI observations have been analyzed using an improved fitting methodology and using time series of various lengths, up to a single 4,608 day long epoch (64 times 72 days or 12.6 yr). We used time series of spherical harmonic

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The X-ray binary system 4U 2206+54 hides many mysteries. Among them, the surprising behavior of both of its co components: the O9.5 dwarf star BD+53°2790 and a slowly rotating neutron star. BD+53°2790 misled the astronomers, exhibiting characteristics reminiscent of Be stars. However, a deeper spectral analysis and more intense monitoring revealed