We study the role of fundamental constants in an updated recombination scenario. We focus on the time variation of the fine structure constant α, and the electron mass m in the early Universe, and put bounds on these quantities by using data from CMB including WMAP 5-yr release and the 2dFGRS power spectrum. We analyze how the constraints are

We have studied the role of fundamental constants in an updated recombination scenario. We focus on the time variation of the fine structure constant α, and the electron mass me in the early Universe. In the last years, helium recombination has been studied in great detail revealing the importance of taking new physical processes into account in

An analysis of a ROSAT/PSPC observation of the galaxy cluster A2634 is presented. The cluster has a luminosity of 7.9+/-0.1x10^43^erg/s in the ROSAT band (0.1-2.4keV). The temperature profile decreases from about 3keV in the outer parts to 1.2keV in the centre. Within a radius of 1.5Mpc the gas mass of the cluster is 0.51x10^14^Msun_ and the total

We report on the analysis of the Chandra-ACIS data of O, B, and WR stars in the young association Cyg OB2. X-ray spectra of 49 O-stars, 54 B-stars, and 3 WR-stars are analyzed and for the brighter sources, the epoch dependence of the X-ray fluxes is investigated. The O-stars in Cyg OB2 follow a well-defined scaling relation between their X-ray and

Context. Classical novae (CNe) have recently been reported to represent the major class of supersoft X-ray sources (SSSs) in the central region of our neighbour galaxy M 31. Aims: We carried out a dedicated monitoring of the M 31 central region with XMM-Newton and Chandra in order to find SSS counterparts of CNe, determine the duration of their SSS

Optical novae have recently been identified as the major class of supersoft X-ray sources in M 31 based on ROSAT and early XMM-Newton and Chandra observations. This paper reports on a search for X-ray counterparts of optical novae in M 31 based on archival Chandra HRC-I and ACIS-I as well as XMM-Newton observations of the galaxy center region