We present deep echelle spectrophotometry of the Galactic HII regions M16, M20 and NGC 3603. The data have been taken with the Very Large Telescope Ultraviolet-Visual Echelle Spectrograph in the 3100-10400 Å range. We have detected more than 200 emission lines in each region. Physical conditions have been derived using different continuum and line

Aims.The present paper focuses on the evolution of hydrogen-deficient white dwarfs with the aim of exploring the consequences of different initial envelope structures on the carbon abundances expected in helium-rich, carbon-contaminated DQ white dwarfs. In particular, the evolutionary link between the DQs with low detected carbon abundances and the

The MAGIC collaboration has studied the high-frequency-peaked BL Lac object 1ES 1218+30.4, at a redshift z=0.182, using the MAGIC imaging air Cerenkov telescope located on the Canary Island of La Palma. A gamma-ray signal was observed with 6.4 σ significance. The differential energy spectrum for an energy threshold of 120 GeV can be fitted by a

The magnetic field is the key physical quantity responsible for the formation, stability, and evolution of solar prominences (ribbons of cool dense gas embedded in the hot tenuous corona). Therefore, it is important to obtain good empirical knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of prominence magnetic fields. Here we show how the magnetic

With this proposal we will decouple luminosity effects from evolutionary effects in matched samples of radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars, and determine the amount of radiation that is absorbed and reprocessed by the torus, and how this depends on luminosity and orientation. We have constructed a well-defined sample of radio-quiet quasars from the

Context: .Synthesis models predict the integrated properties of stellar populations. Several problems exist in this field, mostly related to the fact that integrated properties are distributed. To date, this aspect has been either ignored (as in standard synthesis models, which are inherently deterministic) or interpreted phenomenologically (as in