We present an overview and a brief report on the status of the STELLA project (abbreviation for STELLar Activity). The STELLA-I telescope will be the first robotic telescope that feeds a bench-mounted high-resolution Echelle spectrograph with a set of 50 and 100 μm fibres and provides spectral resolutions of up to 47,000 with a 1 arcsec slit. The

We present multiband optical/IR photometry of V4580 Sgr, the optical counterpart of the accretion-powered millisecond pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658, taken during the 1998 X-ray outburst of the system. The optical flux is consistent with emission from an X-ray-heated accretion disk. Self-consistent modeling of the X-ray and optical emission during the

Alcatel Space together with Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille is leading one of two competing consortia of European industry and scientific institutions tasked by ESA with carrying out detailed assessment and definition studies of the Near-Infrared Spectrometer for NGST. In this paper, we present the current baseline instrument concept that

We collected photometrical and dynamical data for 73 low red-shift (z

The effects of seeing on Sérsic r1/n profile parameters are extensively studied using a Moffat function. This analytical approximation to the point spread function (PSF) is shown to provide the best fit to the PSF predicted from atmospheric turbulence theory when β~4.765. The Moffat PSF is additionally shown to contain the Gaussian PSF as a

We present R-band observations of the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey gravitational lens system B1152+199, obtained with the active optics system at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo. Owing to the very good spatial resolution of the images (0.6"), the optical counterpart of the two quasar components and the lens galaxy have been clearly identified