The stellar velocity ellipsoid (SVE) quantifies the amount of velocity dispersion in the vertical, radial and azimuthal directions. Since different disk heating mechanisms (e.g. spiral arms, giant molecular clouds, mergers, etc) affect these components differently, the SVE can constrain the sources of heating in disk galaxies. At present the 3D

In the era of big surveys, integral-field units (IFUs) are starting to emerge as one of the most popular instruments to carry out forefront astronomy on large sets of objects and/or large portions of the sky. In this contribution I will highlight some of the most important efforts conducted with this kind of instrumentation, with emphasis on the

Previous numerical studies had apparently ruled out the possibility that flares in galaxy discs could give rise to the apparent breaks in their luminosity profiles when observed edge-on. However the studies have not, until now, analysed this hypothesis systematically using realistic models for the disc, the flare, and the bulge. We revisit this

We confirm the planetary nature of two transiting hot Jupiters discovered by the Kepler spacecraft’s K2 extended mission in its Campaign 4, using precise radial velocity measurements from FIES@NOT, HARPS-N@TNG, and the coudé spectrograph on the McDonald Observatory 2.7 m telescope. K2-29 b (EPIC 211089792b) transits a K1V star with a period of 3

Context. To compute the star formation rate (SFR) of galaxies from the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV), it is essential to take the obscuration by dust into account. To do so, one of the most popular methods consists in combining the UV with the emission from the dust itself in the infrared (IR). Yet, different studies have derived different estimators

The searching for StEllar Counterparts of COmpact high velocity clouds (SECCO) survey is devoted to the search for stellar counterparts within ultra compact high velocity clouds that are candidate low-mass, low-luminosity galaxies. We present the results of a set of simulations aimed at the quantitative estimate of the sensitivity of the survey as