We will present first results from a recent study of circum-nuclear star formation in nearby spiral galaxies, undertaken with the SINFONI integral-field spectrograph on the VLT. The observations yield R 1500 spectra covering both H- and K-band for a contiguous (8 x 8) sqarcsec field of view. Emission line maps reveal in unprecedented detail the

The nearby brown dwarf LP 944-20 has been monitored for radial velocity variability at optical and near-infrared wavelengths using the VLT/UVES and the Keck/NIRSPEC, respectively. The UVES radial velocity data obtained over 14 nights spanning a baseline of 841 days show significant variability with an amplitude of 3.5 km s-1. The periodogram

Powerful radio galaxies and radio-loud quasars at high redshifts are frequently associated with extended emission-line regions (EELRs). Here we investigate the [O II] EELR around the quasar 3C 196 at z=0.871 using integral field spectroscopy. We also detect extended [Ne II] emission at a distance of about 30 kpc from the core. The emission is

We present a study of absorption line-profile variations in early-B type near-main-sequence stars without emission lines. We have surveyed a total of 171 bright stars using the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOTSA), William Herschel Telescope (ING) and Coudé Auxiliary Telescope (ESO). Our sample contains 75% of all O9.5-B2.5 III-V non-emission-line

Two recent published guides help educators and the general public journey to the universe. The writers and editors of StarDate and astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin produced each of the forty-page guides. "The Solar System" includes the sun, planets, and minor bodies of the solar system. "Beyond the Solar System" includes stars

We present a detailed X-ray spectral analysis of the sources in the 1Ms catalog of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) taking advantage of optical spectroscopy and photometric redshifts for 321 extragalactic sources out of the total sample of 347 sources. As a default spectral model, we adopt a power law with slope Γ with an intrinsic redshifted