Stars more massive than about 3M⊙ are known to experience loops in the HR diagram during their core helium burning phase. Except for very massive stars the extent of their loops increases with the stellar mass. We show that a stellar evolution track for a 8M⊙ star computed with the new solar abundances [2] shows only a very tiny loop located near

While collisionally excited lines in H ii regions allow one to easily probe the chemical composition of the interstellar medium in galaxies, the possible presence of important temperature fluctuations casts some doubt on the derived abundances. To provide new insights into this question, we have carried out a detailed study of a giant H ii region

Aims: The transiting planet WASP-12 b was identified as a potential target for transit-timing studies because a departure from a linear ephemeris has been reported in the literature. Such deviations could be caused by an additional planet in the system. We attempt to confirm the claimed variations in transit timing and interpret their origin

We present a study of the morphology, kinematics and star formation of a sample of 27 isolated spiral galaxies in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G), on the basis of Hα Fabry-Perot (FP) data from the GHαFaS instrument at the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma, complemented with images at 3.6 micron from the Spitzer

Observations show a clear vertical metallicity gradient in the Galactic bulge, which is often taken as a signature of dissipative processes in the formation of a classical bulge. Various evidence shows, however, that the Milky Way is a barred galaxy with a boxy bulge representing the inner three-dimensional part of the bar. Here we show with a

Optical spectroscopy of the blue star KIC 10449976 shows that it is an extremely helium-rich subdwarf with effective temperature Teff = 40 000 ± 300 K and surface gravity log g = 5.3 ± 0.1. Radial-velocity measurements over a 5 d time-scale show an upper variability limit of ≈50 ± 20 km s-1. Kepler photometry of KIC 10449976 in both long and short