SDSS DR6 includes about 300,000 stellar spectra, and a significant fraction of them belong to members of the halo. We make use of these data to examine closely the shape of the halo metallicity distribution. Does it have a single peak? Is it bimodal? Does it offer any clues on its formation and evolution?

We present the rationale, first observations and preliminary results of our radial velocity search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. So far we have obtained 2.5 nights (1.5 already done, 2 half nights pending) of Keck NASA time to collect high-resolution near-infrared spectra using NIRSPEC on the KECK II telescope. Our sample consists of 80 nearby

We introduce the The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Chemical Abundances of Stars in the Halo (CASH) Project. This University of Texas Long Term Project aims at discovering metal-poor Galactic halo stars selected from various surveys. We present the results of the first year of HET observations: Thus far, 200 objects are observed with the high-resolution

We present the first detailed abundance analysis of the metal-poor giant HK-II 17435-00532. This star was observed as part of the University of Texas Long-Term "Chemical Abundances of Stars in the Halo" (CASH) Project. A spectrum was obtained with the High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS) on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope with a resolving power of R 15

The formation of galactic discs and the efficiency of star formation within them are issues central to our understanding of galaxy formation. We have developed a detailed and versatile model of disc formation which combines the strengths of previous studies of isolated discs with those of hierarchical galaxy formation models. Disc structure is

We review the progress of ESO/WFI Imaging and VLT/FLAMES spectroscopy of large numbers of individual stars in nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies by the Dwarf Abundances and Radial-velocities Team (DART). These observations have allowed us to show that neither the kinematics nor the abundance nor the spatial distributions are easy to explain in a