The early-type galaxy (ETG) mass-size relation has largely been studied to understand how these galaxies assembled their mass. One key observational result of the last years is that massive galaxies increased their size by a factor of a few at fixed stellar mass from z ~ 2. Hierarchical models favor minor mergers as a plausible driver of this size

We present high-resolution, time-resolved optical spectroscopy of the black hole X-ray transient Swift J1753.5-0127. Our optical spectra do not show features that we can associate with the companion star. However we do observe broad, double-peaked emission lines, typical of an accretion disc. We show that the mass of the compact object is likely >7

We present a method to reduce noise in helioseismic power spectra using a non-orthogonal wavelet transform based on quadratic spline functions. The quality of our method is tested by applying it to artificially generated time-series approximating solar p-modes. The mode frequencies and line widths obtained from least-squares fits to the smoothed

IAUC 4283 available at Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams.

As part of our ongoing Chandra/HST M31 transient program we report on two active sources recently detected in two Chandra ACIS observations. Source 1 We present two 5ks ACIS-I observations of the ongoing outburst of the M31 transient source CXOM31 J004217.0+411508 (r3-46). Using an absorbed powerlaw model with photon index = 1.7 and nH = 6.6e20

We report the discovery of gas streaming motions along nuclear spiral arms toward the LINER nucleus of the galaxy NGC 6951. The observations, obtained using the GMOS integral field spectrograph on the Gemini North telescope, yielded maps of the flux distributions and gas kinematics in the Hα, [N II] λ6584, and [S II] λλ6717, 6731 emission lines of