We explore the dynamics of ionization-bounded planetary nebulae after the termination of the fast stellar wind. When the stellar wind becomes negligible, the hot, shocked bubble depressurizes, and the thermal pressure of the photoionized region, at the inner edge of the swept-up shell, becomes dominant. At this stage the shell tends to fragment

The purpose of the Active Phasing Experiment, designed under the lead of ESO, is to validate wavefront control concepts for ELT class telescopes. This instrument includes an Active Segmented Mirror, located in a pupil image. It will be mounted at a Nasmyth focus of one of the Unit Telescopes of the ESO VLT. APE contains four different types of

In a framework of ELT design study our group is building an Active Phasing Experiment (APE), the main goals of which is to demonstrate the non-adaptive wavefront control scheme and technology for Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). The experiment includes verification and test of different phasing sensors and integration of a phasing wavefront sensor

We describe a deep multi-colour NIR survey (TCS-CAIN) that has been recently completed at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Spain). The survey is of selected areas distributed along the Galactic plane and it goes deeper than 2MASS or DENIS. Its aim was to explore the large-scale structure of the Milky Way and the Galactic components, in