The Gaia-ESO survey (GES) is now in its fifth and last year of observations and has produced tens of thousands of high-quality spectra of stars in all Milky Way components. This paper presents the strategy behind the selection of astrophysical calibration targets, ensuring that all GES results on radial velocities, atmospheric parameters, and

The blazar S4 0954+65 (at a disputed redshift of z=0.368 or z≥0.45) underwent an exceptionally high state in the optical band during January and February 2015, as revealed by the Tuorla and St. Petersburg University blazar monitoring programs: a brightening of more than 3 magnitudes in the R-band from the average monitored states. Simultaneous data

Polarized emission from aligned interstellar dust is both a crucial tool for studies of magnetism in the interstellar medium and a troublesome contaminant in studies of the polarized cosmic microwave background. In each case, an understanding of the significance of the dust polarization signal requires well-calibrated models that accurately

Binary central stars of planetary nebula are a valuable tool in understanding common envelope evolution. In these cases both the resulting close binary system and the expanding envelope (the planetary nebula) can be studied directly. In order to compare observed systems with common envelope evolution models we need to determine precise physical

The low-mass X-ray binary Aquila X-1 is one of the most active neutron star X-ray transients. Despite its relatively bright quiescent optical counterpart, the detection of its companion has been hampered by the presence of a nearby interloper star. Using the Spectrograph for INtegral Field Observations in the Near Infrared (SINFONI) on the Very

This paper describes the CMS trigger system and its performance during Run 1 of the LHC. The trigger system consists of two levels designed to select events of potential physics interest from a GHz (MHz) interaction rate of proton-proton (heavy ion) collisions. The first level of the trigger is implemented in hardware, and selects events containing