Spectra for the selected targets have been collected with the GIRAFFE spectrograph fed by MEDUSA fibres (in some cases the observations were taken in the combined UVES+MEDUSA mode) of the FLAMES multi-fibre instrument at the ESO Very Large Telescope, between May 2011 and September 2012. Observations were carried out in service mode under programme

The acronym ESPRESSO stems for Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations; this instrument will be the next VLT high resolution spectrograph. The spectrograph will be installed at the Combined-Coudé Laboratory of the VLT and linked to the four 8.2 m Unit Telescopes (UT) through four optical Coudé trains

Not Available

A cryogenic achromatic half-wave plate (HWP) for submillimetre astronomical polarimetry has been designed, manufactured, tested and deployed in the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol). The design is based on the five-slab Pancharatnam recipe and it works in the wavelength range 200-600 μm, making it the

Star-forming regions that are visible at 3.6 μm and Hα but not in the u, g, r, i, z bands of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey are measured in five nearby spiral galaxies to find extinctions averaging ~3.8 mag and stellar masses averaging ~5 × 104 M ☉. These regions are apparently young star complexes embedded in dark filamentary shock fronts connected

SDSS-III's newest release is Data Release 10 (DR10). DR10 contains the first spectra of the APO Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE). APOGEE is the first high-resolution (R ~ 22,500), high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N >= 100 per resolution element), H-band (1.51 - 1.70 um) survey of all Galactic stellar populations (bulge, bar, disks, halo) with a