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

Aims.The purpose of this work is to analyze the reliability of the magnetic field strengths inferred from the 630 nm pair of Fe i lines in internetwork quiet Sun regions. Methods: .Some numerical experiments have been performed that demonstrate the inability of these lines to recover the magnetic field strength in such low flux solar regions

We present visible and near-IR spectra of the nucleus of comet 162P/Siding Spring (also known as 2004 TU12) obtained in 2004 December, while it had no detectable coma. This is the third object observed to have intermittent cometary activity even when relatively close to the Sun. The spectra show no strong features in this wavelength range. This

Dynamical arguments indicate that 944 Hidalgo is most likely an extinct or dormant comet. Hidalgo's Tisserand invariant (T = 2.07) suggests strongly that this object came either from the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud (e.g., Weissman et al. 2002). We obtained low-resolution near-infrared spectra in the 0.8-2.4 micron region on UT Oct 22, 23, Nov 19

We present first results obtained from our spectroscopic survey of near-Earth objects (NEOSS), comprising a total of 102 visible and near-infrared spectra of asteroids. Visible data have been recorded with the 2.5-m Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), while near-infrared spectra have been taken at 3.5-m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, both telescopes