A ground based transit survey of M and K-dwarf stars near the galactic plane should be able to determine the abundance of the lower end of the planetary radius function, i.e., extrasolar planets smaller than Neptune. We have shown (Doyle et al. 2000), that the ground-based detection of planets as small as 2.5 Earth-radii within the M-star

This paper discusses the status of observations of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. The first detections of primary anisotropies in the CMB, achieved about 10 years ago, boosted a large number of ground-based and balloon-borne experiments that have delineated the CMB angular power spectrum up to spherical harmonic multipole l~1000. A

In terms of statistical fluctuations, stellar population synthesis models are only asymptotically correct in the limit of a large number of stars, where sampling errors become asymptotically small. When dealing with stellar clusters, starbursts, dwarf galaxies or stellar populations within pixels, sampling errors introduce a large dispersion in the

We examine seven Chandra ACIS-I observations centered on the nucleus of M31. Recent Chandra [1] and XMM results [2] have shown evidence of diffuse emission and have shown this emission to be softer than the point sources present in the nucleus. We also see a gradient in the hardness ratio with respect to radius in the diffuse emission. We will

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This book contains the lectures delivered at the XII Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics on Astrophysical Spectropolarimetry. It highlights how recent developments in theoretical astrophysics and astronomical instrumentation are leading an ever-growing number of astrophysicists to appreciate the enormous diagnostic potential offered by