We present initial results from a water-vapour monitoring campaign initiated in 1996. A certain amount of caution must still be applied to the interpretation of the water-vapour statistics as a large majority of the data have been taken in summer, or autumn. Continued monitoring is accumulating strong evidence of a seasonal effect, with typically

We present WeCAPP, a long term monitoring project searching for microlensing events towards M 31. Since 1997 the bulge of M 31 was monitored in two different wavebands with the Wendelstein 0.8 m telescope. In 1999 we extended our observations to the Calar Alto 1.23 m telescope. Observing simultaneously at these two sites we obtained a time coverage

We report the first results of a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) program which performed WFPC2 multi-color imaging of a sample of A- and B-type supergiant stars in M31 and M33. This sample has previously been studied by us spectroscopically with the High Resolution Echelle Spectrograph (HIRES) on the 10m Keck-I Telescope. In particular, fits to the P

We present a detailed morphological, photometric, and kinematic analysis of two barred S0 galaxies with large, luminous inner disks inside their bars. We show that these structures, in addition to being geometrically disklike, have exponential profiles (scale lengths ~300-500 pc) distinct from the central, nonexponential bulges. We also find them

Based on IMaX/SUNRISE data, we report on a previously undetected phenomenon in solar granulation. We show that in a very narrow region separating granules and intergranular lanes, the spectral line width of the Fe I 5250.2 Å line becomes extremely small. We offer an explanation of this observation with the help of magneto-convection simulations