Context. The ESPRESSO spectrograph is a new powerful tool developed to detect and characterize extrasolar planets. Its design allows an unprecedented radial velocity precision (down to a few tens of cm s −1) and long-term thermomechanical stability. Aims: We present the first stand-alone detection of an extrasolar planet by blind radial velocity

White-light flares are magnetically driven localized brightenings on the surfaces of stars. Their temporal, spectral, and statistical properties present a treasury of physical information about stellar magnetic fields. The spatial distributions of magnetic spots and associated flaring regions help constrain dynamo theories. Moreover, flares are

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is central to our interpretation of astronomical observables and to our understanding of most baryonic processes within galaxies. The universality of the IMF, suggested by observations in our own Milky Way, has been thoroughly revisited due to the apparent excess of low-mass stars in the central regions of

We report here on the first multiwavelength (MWL) campaign on the blazar TXS 1515-273, undertaken in 2019 and extending from radio to very-high-energy gamma-rays (VHE). Up until now, this blazar had not been the subject of any detailed MWL observations. It has a rather hard photon index at GeV energies and was considered a candidate extreme high

Context. Spectroscopic observations of the emission lines formed in the solar transition region commonly show persistent downflows on the order of 10−15 km s −1. The cause of such downflows, however, is still not fully clear and has remained a matter of debate. Aims: We aim to understand the cause of such downflows by studying the coronal and

In physically realistic, scalar-field-based dynamical dark energy models (including, e.g., quintessence), one naturally expects the scalar field to couple to the rest of the model's degrees of freedom. In particular, a coupling to the electromagnetic sector leads to a time (redshift) dependence in the fine-structure constant and a violation of the