We re-analyze coseismic surface displacement data of the 1908 Messina earthquake, taking into account both correlated and uncorrelated uncertainties, to re-determine the slip distribution on the fault plane. Using a data set of earthquakes occurred at crustal depth in the Messina Straits between July 1988 and December 2004, we evidence a peculiar

Observing the first galaxies formed during the reionisation epoch, i.e. approximately within the first billion years after the Big Bang, remains one of the challenges of contemporary astrophysics. Several efforts are being undertaken to search for such remote objects. Combining the near-IR imaging power of the VLT and the natural effect of strong

We study 1-dimensional coupled map lattices consisting of diffusively coupled Tchebyscheff maps of N-th order. For small coupling constants a we determine the invariant 1-point and 2-point densities of these nonhyperbolic systems in a perturbative way. For arbitrarily small couplings a>0 the densities exhibit a selfsimilar cascade of patterns

Using the low-resolution mode of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), we obtain spectra from 20 spatially-resolved, ultracool dwarfs, eighteen of which belong to nine very low-mass binary systems with known angular separations in the range 0.37 arcsec-0.098 arcsec. For these dwarfs, we derive

On 8-9 September 2006, a series of 7 XMM-Newton observations were performed as part of our XMM-Newton/Chandra monitoring campaign of the 1.7 square degree region around Sgr A* (Wijnands et al. 2006, A&A, 449, 1117). Two X-ray transients were active during our observations. A very-faint transient is active with an 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity of

We present the rest-frame optical and infrared colours of a complete sample of 1114 z 0.3 galaxies from the Spitzer Wide-Area Infrared Extragalactic (SWIRE) Legacy Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We discuss the optical and infrared colours of our sample and analyse in detail the contribution of dusty star-forming galaxies and