Aims: We introduce our imaging survey of possible young massive globular clusters in M31 performed with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We obtained shallow (to B˜ 25) photometry of individual stars in 20 candidate clusters. We present here details of the data reduction pipeline that is being

We present a matched filter algorithm to detect transits of planets that orbit both components of close eclipsing binaries in CoRoT targets. The formation of binary systems surrounded by disks is one of the most common outcomes of stellar formation; their detection would therefore constitute an important discovery. In an eclipsing binary system

We show that elementary aligned electromagnetic excitations of black holes, as coming from exact Kerr-Schild solutions, represent light-like beams pulses which have a very strong back reaction on the metric and change the topology of the horizon. Based on York's proposal, that elementary deformations of the BH horizon are related with elementary

Angular momentum exchange between a bar and a massive halo is thought to be responsible for producing strong bars in disk galaxies (Athanassoula, 2003), while gas transport to the center is believed to weaken or even dissolve bars (Bournaud and Combes 2002). We are carrying out a systematic survey of early-type disk galaxies with the main emphasis

We present an analysis of the second solar spectrum, as plotted in graphical form in the three volumes of the atlas “The Second Solar Spectrum”, in the wavelength range between 3160 Å and 6995 Å. All the strongest positive linear polarization signals produced by atomic spectral lines are identified, and their amplitudes are listed, along with the

We report new spectroscopic and photometric observations of the parent stars of the recently discovered transiting planets TrES-3 and TrES-4. A detailed abundance analysis based on high-resolution spectra yields [Fe/H] = -0.19 ± 0.08, T eff = 5650 ± 75 K, and log g = 4.4 ± 0.1 for TrES-3, and [Fe/H] = +0.14 ± 0.09, T eff = 6200 ± 75 K, and log g =