The Small Magellanic Cloud is a crucial galaxy to understand many aspects of the formation and evolution of galaxies. We propose to collect deep photometry in sixteen fields located at galactocentric distances from R_gc=2 to 4 degrees, in order to obtain color- magnitude diagrams reaching the oldest main sequence turnoff stars with high signal-to

Understanding the assembly of the most massive galaxies is one of the most important problems in astronomy today. It is now feasible to identify the most massive galaxies out to z 2.5, yet we have just begun to probe their evolution. To address this, we propose to obtain deep NIRI NIR long-slit spectroscopy of a sample of 15 ultra-massive galaxies

We report the detection of 15 X-ray bursts with RXTE and Swift observations of the peculiar X-ray binary Circinus X-1 (Cir X-1) during its 2010 May X-ray re-brightening. These are the first X-ray bursts observed from the source after the initial discovery by Tennant and collaborators, 25 years ago. By studying their spectral evolution, we firmly

We present high-resolution echelle spectra of seven proximate damped Lyman α (PDLA) systems. The relative velocity separation of each PDLA from the background quasar is Δ V 3000 km s-1. Combining our sample with a further nine PDLAs from the literature we compare the chemical properties of the proximate systems with a control sample of intervening

We present two-dimensional line-of-sight stellar kinematics of the lens galaxy in the Einstein Cross, obtained with the GEMINI 8 m telescope, using the GMOS integral-field spectrograph. The stellar kinematics extend to a radius of 4'' (with 0farcs2 spaxels), covering about two-thirds of the effective (or half-light) radius Re ~= 6'' of this early

HH 110 is a rather peculiar HerbigHaro object in Orion that originates due to the deflection of another jet (HH 270) by a dense molecular clump, instead of being directly ejected from a young stellar object. Here we present new results on the kinematics and physical conditions of HH 110 based on Integral Field Spectroscopy. The 3D spectral data