We present optical spectra for a representative sample of 27 nearby (z 0.2) Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS)-selected active galactic nuclei (AGN) with red near-infrared colours (J - KS ≳ 2.0). The spectra were taken with the ISIS spectrograph on the William Herschel Telescope with the aim of determining the nature of the red 2MASS AGN, in

We present deep echelle spectrophotometry of the Galactic H II region NGC 2579. The data have been taken with the Very Large Telescope Ultraviolet-Visual Echelle Spectrograph in the 3550-10 400 Å range. This object, which has been largely neglected, shows however a rather high surface brightness, a high ionization degree and is located at a

We use deep integral field spectroscopy data from the CALIFA survey to study the warm interstellar medium (wim) over the entire extent and optical spectral range of 32 nearby early-type galaxies (ETGs). We find that faint nebular emission is extended in all cases, and its surface brightness decreases roughly as ∝ r-α. The large standard deviation

We used Hubble Space Telescope observations to study the young cluster NGC 1844 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We estimated the fraction and the mass-ratio distribution of photometric binaries and report that the main sequence presents an intrinsic breadth which cannot be explained only in terms of photometric errors, and is unlikely because

Observations of very low-mass stars with Kepler represent an excellent opportunity to search for planetary transits and to characterize optical photometric variability at the cool end of the stellar mass distribution. In this paper, we present low-resolution red optical spectra that allow us to identify 18 very low-mass stars that have Kepler light

We report the first spectroscopic identification of massive Galactic asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars at the beginning of the thermal pulse (TP) phase. These stars are the most Li-rich massive AGBs found to date, super Li-rich AGBs with log ɛ (Li) ~ 3-4. The high Li overabundances are accompanied by weak or no s-process element (i.e. Rb and Zr)