The Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) primary mirror control system is responsible for making the 36 segments behave like a monolithic mirror. It deals with 108 positioners giving 3 degrees of freedom to each segment, 168 position sensors installed between adjacent segments measuring nanometrical displacements, 216 actuators controling the figure of

The GTC azimuth and elevation axes control systems employ large custom direct-drive motors operated by means of embedded fully-digital current loops. A high-performance position loop has been developed based on sinusoidal encoder feedback with interpolation error compensation. Real-time servo feedback and trajectory tracking is implemented by

The Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) 10.4m telescope received its First Light on July 13, 2007. At present the GTC is undergoing commissioning tests. Night time observations are being carried out routinely from Monday through to Thursday every week. The GTC will begin science observation by the end of the year, and will be offered to the community in

Aims: Near-IR photometry of dwarf irregular galaxies (dIs) has been acquired to expand the sample of objects suitable for investigating the fundamental plane (FP) discovered previously by us. Data for blue compact dwarfs (BCDs), dwarf ellipticals (dEs), and dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) are amalgamated to evaluate how closely these classes of

We present the current status of the Canarias InfraRed Camera Experiment (CIRCE) an all-reflective near-IR, imager, spectrograph, and polarimeter for the 10.4-meter Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). In particular, we review the progress of the opto- and cryo- mechanical design and manufacture, focusing on the custom filter, lyot, and grism wheels

Aims: Using data from five clusters of galaxies within the redshift range 0.15 ≤ z ≤ 0.25, imaged with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) in the central ≈1 Mpc2 in very good seeing conditions, we have performed an exhaustive inspection of their bright galaxy population. That range of redshift, where only a small amount of data with the required