We present a new deep determination of the spectroscopic luminosity function (LF) within the virial radius of the nearby and massive Abell 85 (A85) cluster down to the dwarf regime (M* + 6) using Very Large Telescope/Visible Multi-Object Spectrograph (VLT/VIMOS) spectra for ˜2000 galaxies with mr ≤ 21 mag and ≤ 24 mag arcsec-2. The resulting LF

We probe the merging channel of massive galaxies over the z = 0.3-1.3 redshift window by studying close pairs in a sample of 238 galaxies with stellar mass ≳1011 M⊙, from the SHARDS (Survey for High-z Absorption Red and Dead Sources) survey. SHARDS provides medium-band photometry equivalent to low-resolution optical spectra (R ˜ 50), allowing us to

An ongoing study is presented in which a photometric non-linear Scaling Relation of Early-Type Galaxies (ETGs) is proposed to carry out a consistency test on cosmic and galaxy evolution.

We have measured C II and O II recombination lines in several H II regions of low-metallicity dwarf galaxies. These objects show lower C/O ratios than H II regions in spiral galaxies, indicating different chemical evolution histories.

We report the discovery of a detached 20-min orbital period binary white dwarf (WD). WD 0931+444 (SDSS J093506.93+441106.9) was previously classified as a WD + M dwarf system based on its optical spectrum. Our time-resolved optical spectroscopy observations obtained at the 8 m Gemini and 6.5 m MMT reveal peak-to-peak radial velocity variations of

Most ultraluminous X-ray sources have a typical set of properties not seen in Galactic stellar-mass black holes. They have luminosities of more than 3 × 1039 ergs per second, unusually soft X-ray components (with a typical temperature of less than about 0.3 kiloelectronvolts) and a characteristic downturn in their spectra above about 5