Context. With this work we start a systematic analysis of the distant activity of several long-period comets in order to investigate the evolution of activity throughout the solar system and explore differences between comets that pass their perihelion at far or very close distances from the Sun. Aims: We present observational data for eight long

Recent theoretical and observational works indicate the presence of a correlation between the star-formation rate (SFR) and active galactic nucleus (AGN) luminosity (and, therefore, the black hole accretion rate, \dot{M}_BH) of Seyfert galaxies. This suggests a physical connection between the gas-forming stars on kpc scales and the gas on sub-pc

As early as 10 Gyr ago, galaxies with more than 1011 M ☉ of stars already existed. While most of these massive galaxies must have subsequently transformed through on-going star formation and mergers with other galaxies, a small fraction (lsim0.1%) may have survived untouched until today. Searches for such relic galaxies, useful windows to explore

The morphology of galaxies can be quantified to some degree using a set of scale-invariant parameters. Concentration (C), asymmetry (A), smoothness (S), the Gini index (G), the relative contribution of the brightest pixels to the second-order moment of the flux (M 20), ellipticity (E), and the Gini index of the second-order moment (GM ) have all

The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) is obtaining high resolution ( 22,500), high signal-to-noise (> 100) spectra in the 1510-1690 nm spectral region for 100,000 cool, predominantly post-main sequence stars. To ascertain the stellar atmospheric parameters and measure chemical abundances for the numerous chemical

The origin and formation of the Milky Way bulge remains poorly understood, in part because high quality observations of the bulge have generally been restricted to regions of low extinction. In the presence of dust, infrared observations confer a distinct advantage over those at optical wavelengths, and the advent of the Apache Point Observatory