Aims: We present a new semi-analytical model of galaxy formation, GECO (Galaxy Evolution COde), designed to improve our understanding of when and how the processes of both star formation and galaxy assembly took place, by comparison with a wide variety of data about galaxy mass-function evolution and star-formation histories. Methods: Our model is

The frequency analysis was carried out using the recently available software package SigSpec and Period04. (17 data files).

Modern optical and infrared astronomical sites are getting used to a flexible way of operation, namely queue modes, allowing astronomical observations in the most appropriate weather conditions for each specific observing scientific program. The forecast of weather conditions is then a mandatory issue to plan in advance the observations queue for

This paper describes the flight control software of the wave-front correction system that flew on the 2009 science flight of the Sunrise balloon telescope. The software discussed here allowed fully automated operations of the wave-front sensor, communications with the adaptive optics sub-system, the pointing system, the instrument control unit and

The Wind Evaluation Breadboard (WEB) is a primary mirror and telescope simulator formed by seven aluminium segments, including position sensors, electromechanical support systems and support structures. WEB has been developed to evaluate technologies for primary mirror wavefront control and to evaluate the performance of the control of wind

We have carried out two extremely deep surveys with SPIRE, one of the two cameras on Herschel, at 250 μm, close to the peak of the far-infrared background. We have used the results to investigate the evolution of the rest-frame 250-μm luminosity function out to z = 2. We find evidence for strong evolution out to z ≃ 1 but evidence for at most weak