We discuss how, in the 1970's, Eddy took clues from the historical researches of Spörer and Maunder in the 19th century to draw attention to the virtual absence of sunspot activity between 1645 and 1715. This ``Maunder Minimum'' is not only of interest to solar physicists in the context of the theory of solar magnetic activity, and to stellar

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The secondary objective of the GOLF Experiment on-board the SOHO space mission is to measure the line-of-sight component of the disk averaged magnetic field of the Sun. GOLF is an improved disk-integrated sunlight resonant scattering spectrophotome ter. Using an extra fixed quarter wave plate placed at the entrance of the instrument, enables a

The empirical study of confirmed brown dwarfs began in 1995. Until this year, however, no ironclad examples of free-floating field brown dwarfs have been confirmed. Recently three excellent candidates have been discovered --- bright enough to obtain high resolution spectra with the Keck 10-m telescope. Two of our targets clearly show the lithium

Amongst the different techniques applied up to now to the search for solar g--modes (peaks identification, study of the phase/power coherence, the P0 - nur diagrams, etc ldots), some ones are primarily based on the use of their asymptotic behaviour: the constant separation in period between consecutive modes of the same degree ell. The exact