The description of the PESCA instrument control system is presented. The PESCA instrument has been designed and built with the purpose of studying the Solar Energetic Particles and the Anomalous Cosmic Rays from helium to iron in the energy range 1.5-50 MeV/uma and will be part of the Russian PHOTON satellite payload. The instrument comprises two

Over the past 12 years we have been conducting a survey of IRAS (PSC) sources with dust temperatures between 100 and 250 K, which is the temperature of AGB shells after mass loss has ceased. About 1000 PSC sources fulfill this criterion, about half of them identified previously in the literature: most are PNe (49%) and post-AGB stars (27%), but

We test the hypothesis that radio galaxies are a random subset of otherwise normal elliptical galaxies. Starting with the observed optical luminosity functions for elliptical galaxies, we show that the probability of an elliptical forming a radio source is a continuous, increasing function of optical luminosity, proportional to L2+/-0.4. With this

New visual light curves and infrared multi-epoch photometry are presented for a sample of AGB-stars spectroscopically observed with ISO. While the ISO work is or will be presented elsewhere, the aim of this paper is to give an overview of the properties of the light change of the objects. This information is crucial for the interpretation of the

Near-infrared spectroscopy was conducted to search for molecular material around 40 post-AGB stars. We present the detection of molecular emission lines of H2, 1-0S(1) at 2.122 microns and 2-1S(1) at 2.248 microns in 11 of the post-AGB observed. In addition, Brγ lines at 2.166 microns also were detected in these objects. To investigate the

Ionized gas and stellar kinematical parameters have been measured along the major axis of 20 nearby disc galaxies. We discuss the properties of each sample galaxy, distinguishing between those characterized by regular or peculiar kinematics. In early-type disc galaxies, ionized gas tends to rotate faster than stars and to have a lower velocity