Volume Phase Holographic Gratings (VPHG) are gaining more and more interest as optical dispersing elements in new astronomical spectrographs at low and medium resolution. A key point is the development of new photosensitive materials suitable to produce VPHGs that match the stringent requirements of the astronomical environment. Here we report on

We present the discovery of a candidate multiply transiting system, the first one found in the CoRoT mission. Two transit-like features with periods of 5.11 and 11.76 d are detected in the CoRoT light curve around a main sequence K1V star of r = 15.1. If the features are due to transiting planets around the same star, these would correspond to

We present the thermal model of the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol). This instrument was successfully own in two circumpolar flights from McMurdo, Antarctica in 2010 and 2012. During these two flights, BLASTPol obtained unprecedented information about the magnetic field in molecular clouds through the

Context. The Vista Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) ESO Public Survey is a variability survey of the Milky Way bulge and an adjacent section of the disk carried out from 2010 on ESO Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). The VVV survey will eventually deliver a deep near-IR atlas with photometry and positions in five

We study X-ray transients from the XMM-Newton slew catalog with focus on the identification of flare stars. We have selected 118 variable X-ray sources from the XMM-Newton slew catalog Delta-3 on the basis of at least 70-fold enhanced count rate with respect to ROSAT. Our characterization of the counterparts includes a systematic cross-match with

While analysing the images of the IPHAS (INT/WFC Photometric Hα Survey of the northern Galactic plane) survey, we noticed that the central star of the candidate planetary nebula IPHASXJ211420.0+434136 (also named Ou5) was clearly variable. This is generally considered as an indication of binarity. To confirm it, we performed a photometric