La Palma Observatory offers four multi-object spectrographs installed on 4 and 10 m class telescopes. We present an overview of these four instruments. As a scientific case for two of them, we present the optical follow-up of Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) sources undertaken by the Planck collaboration, focused on the detection, redshifts determination and

In the current paradigm of galaxy formation, baryons are embedded in dark matter haloes which grow through merger events across cosmic time. The properties and subsequent evolution of baryons depend on the halo they live in. In particular, clusters of galaxies which lie at the high mass end of the halo mass function, contain both the most massive

The origin of the unification model for active galactic nuclei (AGN) was the detection of broad hydrogen recombination lines in the optical polarized spectrum of the Seyfert 2 galaxy (Sy2) NGC 1068. Since then, a search for the hidden broad-line region (HBLR) of nearby Sy2s started, but polarized broad lines have only been detected in ˜30-40 per

Using a specialized technique sensitive to the presence of expanding ionized gas, we have detected a set of three concentric expanding shells in an H II region in the nearby spiral galaxy M33. After mapping the kinematics in Hα with Fabry-Perot spectroscopy, we used slit spectra to measure the intensities of the [S II] doublet at λλ671.9, 673.1 nm

This paper reviews Ladenburg’s development of the phenomenological theory of radiative transitions between the stationary states of an atom put forward by Einstein in 1917. The historical background as well as the far reaching outcomes of his work are considered and discussed; among them the Kramers–Heisenberg quantum dispersion theory that paved

This paper is the first one of a series of two on the role of the optical dispersion in the historical development of early quantum mechanics. As preparation for the successive paper on Ladenburg’s development of the phenomenological theory of radiative transitions between the stationary states of an atom by Einstein, we present here the current