We present abundances for seven stars in the (extremely) low-metallicity tail of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy, from spectra taken with X-shooter on the ESO VLT. Targets were selected from the Ca II triplet (CaT) survey of the dwarf abundances and radial velocities team (DART) using the latest calibration. Of the seven extremely metal-poor

Context. The Ca II H line is one of the strongest lines in the solar spectrum, and it provides continuous information on the solar atmosphere from the photosphere to the lower chromosphere. Aims: We describe an inversion approach that reproduces observed Ca II H spectra by assuming local thermal equilibrium (LTE). Methods: We developed an inversion

Cygnus OB2 is the closest massive star forming region hosting thousand OB stars to the Sun (1450 pc). It represents the best target to study how OB stars affect the star formation process, protoplanetary disk evolution and the evolution of the parent molecular cloud its surroundings. We obtained deep optical observations in r', i', and z' bands

Aims: The chemical evolution of galaxies on a cosmological timescale is still a matter of debate despite the increasing number of available data provided by spectroscopic surveys of star-forming galaxies at different redshifts. The fundamental relations involving metallicity, such as the mass - metallicity relation (MZR) or the fundamental

We present observations of the molecular gas in the nuclear environment of three prototypical low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs), based on VLT/SINFONI AO-assisted integral-field spectroscopy of H2 1-0 S(1) emission at angular resolutions of ~0.''17. On scales of 50-150 pc, the spatial distribution and kinematics of the molecular gas are

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than the combined efforts of all previous spectroscopic surveys of large-scale structure. BOSS uses 1.5 million luminous galaxies as faint as i = 19.9 over 10,000 deg2 to measure