Optical instruments for measurement of precise rapid timing have recently given us the capability of going beyond X-ray variability. Observations of several sources have revealed multi-wavelength variations on a wide range of continuous timescales from ms up, and intriguing flux correlations with X-ray fluctuations have been found. These give

The spectrographs on-board the World Space Observatory (WSO) will provide access to the 1020-1800 Å wavelength range with unprecedented sensitivity. Previous observatories operating in the 1150-2000 Å range (such as IUE and HST-STIS) have proved extremely useful to study the winds of OB type stars, which leave their most prominent imprints in the

We present u-, g-, r-, i- and z-band optical images and associated catalogues taken primarily with the Isaac Newton Telescope Wide Field Camera on the European Large Area ISO Survey (ELAIS) N1 and N2, First Look Survey and Lockman Hole fields comprising a total of 1000 h of integration time over 80 deg2 and approximately 4.3 million objects. In

OSIRIS (Optical System for Imaging and low Resolution Integrated Spectroscopy) is the first light instrument of the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). It provides a flexible and competitive tunable filter (TF). Since it is based on a Fabry-Perot interferometer working in a collimated beam, the TF transmission wavelength depends on the position of the

The Tarantula Survey employs three modes of the Fibre Large Array Multi-Element Spectrograph (FLAMES) instrument on the VLT: Medusa-Giraffe, ARGUS-Giraffe and UVES. Most of the Medusa observations were obtained over the period 2008 October to 2009 February. (2 data files).

We calculate precise stellar radii and surface gravities from the asteroseismic analysis of over 500 solar-type pulsating stars observed by the Kepler space telescope. These physical stellar properties are compared with those given in the Kepler Input Catalog (KIC), determined from ground-based multi-color photometry. For the stars in our sample