Context. The Vista Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) ESO Public Survey is a variability survey of the Milky Way bulge and an adjacent section of the disk carried out from 2010 on ESO Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). The VVV survey will eventually deliver a deep near-IR atlas with photometry and positions in five

We study X-ray transients from the XMM-Newton slew catalog with focus on the identification of flare stars. We have selected 118 variable X-ray sources from the XMM-Newton slew catalog Delta-3 on the basis of at least 70-fold enhanced count rate with respect to ROSAT. Our characterization of the counterparts includes a systematic cross-match with

While analysing the images of the IPHAS (INT/WFC Photometric Hα Survey of the northern Galactic plane) survey, we noticed that the central star of the candidate planetary nebula IPHASXJ211420.0+434136 (also named Ou5) was clearly variable. This is generally considered as an indication of binarity. To confirm it, we performed a photometric

To test recent suggestions that the infrared emission of low-luminosity AGN arises in a truncated thin accretion disk, we compare recent, high-resolution IR data with published SED model fits that include emission from the truncated disk. We also fit the data with clumpy torus and optically thin dust shell models. These comparisons suggest that

EMIR is a second generation GTC instrument. EMIR's external structure is a huge cylindrical vacuum chamber of 2.2m length and 1.8m in diameter with a weight of around 5 tons, with the instrument inside on a floating optical bench at the LN2 temperature in a cryogenicaly poumped system. The instrument is mounted on the optical bench over a double

We present optical integral field spectroscopy (IFS) observations of the Mice, a major merger between two massive (≳1011 M⊙) gas-rich spirals NGC 4676A and B, observed between first passage and final coalescence. The spectra provide stellar and gas kinematics, ionised gas properties, and stellar population diagnostics, over the full optical extent