We study whether dry merger-driven size growth of massive elliptical galaxies depends on their initial structural concentration, and analyse the validity of the homology hypothesis for virial mass determination in massive ellipticals grown by dry mergers. High-resolution simulations of a few realistic merger trees, starting with compact progenitors

We present the instrument, science case, and timeline of the CLASP2 sounding rocket mission. The successful CLASP (Chromospheric Lyman-Alpha Spectro-Polarimeter) sounding rocket flight in 2015 resulted in the first-ever linear polarization measurements of solar hydrogen Lyman-alpha line, which is sensitive to the Hanle effect and can be used to

Stellar evolution computations provide the foundation of several methods applied to study the evolutionary properties of stars and stellar populations, both Galactic and extragalactic. The accuracy of the results obtained with these techniques is linked to the accuracy of the stellar models, and in this context the correct treatment of the

Context. Over the past 40 years, helioseismology has been enormously successful in the study of the solar interior. A shortcoming has been the lack of a convincing detection of the solar g modes, which are oscillations driven by gravity and are hidden in the deepest part of the solar body - its hydrogen-burning core. The detection of g modes is

Using the Illustris cosmological simulation, we investigate the origin of fossil groups in the {M}200={10}13{--}{10}13.5 {M}⊙ {h}-1 mass regime. We examine the formation of the two primary features of fossil groups: the large magnitude gap between their two brightest galaxies and their exceptionally luminous brightest group galaxy (BGG). For

The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment provides the opportunity of measuring elemental abundances for C, N, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, K, Ca, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, and Ni in vast numbers of stars. We analyze thechemical-abundance patterns of these elements for 158 red giant stars belonging to the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy (Sgr). This is