The determination of the star formation history of galaxies and the origin of the ISM fuel is one of the main unsolved issues in the study of the formation and evolution of galaxies. By now it appears that supermassive black holes play a major role in regulating the amount of gas, and thus the star formation in their host system. To understand

Ca II triplet spectroscopy has been used to derive stellar metallicities for individual stars in four Large Magellanic Cloud fields situated at galactocentric distances of 3°, 5°, 6°, and 8° to the north of the bar. Observed metallicity distributions show a well-defined peak, with a tail toward low metallicities. The mean metallicity remains

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Context: Luminous blue compact galaxies, common at z ~ 1 but now relatively rare, show disturbed kinematics in emission lines. Aims: As part of a programme to understand their formation and evolution, we have investigated the stellar dynamics of a number of nearby objects in this class. Methods: We obtained long-slit spectra with VLT/FORS2 in the

We present observations of the nearby barred starburst galaxy M83 (NGC 5236), with the new Fabry-Perot interferometer GHαFaS mounted on the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope on La Palma. The unprecedented high-resolution observations, of 16 pc FWHM-1, of the Hα-emitting gas cover the central 2 kpc of the galaxy. The velocity field displays the

We report on high angular resolution, high-precision spectropolarimetric measurements of a decaying sunspot. The spot gradually lost its penumbra during the course of 3 days. In the late stages of evolution, where the only remnant of the spot is a naked umbra, we find small-scale inhomogeneities in the magnetic canopy surrounding it. The