We present a large sample of fully self-consistent hydrodynamical Nbody/Tree-SPH simulations of isolated dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). It has enabled us to identify the key physical parameters and mechanisms at the origin of the observed variety in the Local Group dSph properties. The initial total mass (gas + dark matter) of these galaxies is

We study the contribution of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect, generated by the warm-hot intergalactic medium, to the cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies in the five-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data. We explore the concordance ΛCDM cosmological model, with and without this kSZ contribution, using a

The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST) is a systematic survey to establish a legacy of uniform multi-color photometry of resolved stars for a volume-limited sample of nearby galaxies (D 4 Mpc). The survey volume encompasses 69 galaxies in diverse environments, including close pairs, small and large groups, filaments, and truly isolated

We present the first study of the variable star populations in the isolated dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) Cetus and Tucana. Based on Hubble Space Telescope images obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in the F475W and F814W bands, we identified 180 and 371 variables in Cetus and Tucana, respectively. The vast majority are RR Lyrae stars

Post Main Sequence (post MS) stars keep a trace of their past main sequence history. Typically, the presence or not of an Intermediate Convective Zone (ICZ) above the H-burning shell of massive stars critically depends on the details of the Main Sequence (MS) phase modeling (convection criterion, mass loss,~...). We show here how the excitation of

We present a new luminosity-colour relation based on trigonometric parallaxes for thin-disc main-sequence stars in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometry. We matched stars from the newly reduced Hipparcos catalogue with the ones taken from Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) All-Sky Catalogue of Point Sources, and applied a series of constraints