By the time, in 1937, the Swiss astronomer Zwicky measured the velocity dispersion of the Coma cluster of galaxies, astronomers somehow got acquainted with the idea that the universe is filled by some kind of dark matter. After almost a century of investigations, we have learned two things about dark matter, (i) it has to be non-baryonic - that is

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Mercury's transit on the solar disk offers ideal conditions to determine the stray light level of instruments. We present here the results on the stray light level deduced from the observation of the Mercury transit on 2003 May 7th at the secondary focus of the THEMIS telescope with the broad-band and spectral channels of the IPM instrument. The

Context: . The morphology of massive star formation in the central regions of galaxies is an important tracer of the dynamical processes that govern the evolution of disk, bulge, and nuclear activity. Aims. We present optical imaging of the central regions of a sample of 73 spiral galaxies in the Hα line and in optical broad bands, and derive

We present the stellar and gas kinematics of a sample of 18 nearby late-type spiral galaxies (Hubble types ranging from Sb to Sd), observed with the integral-field spectrograph SAURON at the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope. SAURON covers the spectral range 4800-5380Å, allowing us to measure the Hβ, Fe, Mgb absorption features and the emission in

The physical nature of the currently observed dark energy in the universe is completely unclear, and many different theoretical models co-exist. Nevertheless, if dark energy is produced by vacuum fluctuations then there is a chance to probe some of its properties by simple laboratory tests based on Josephson junctions. These electronic devices can