We present results on the evolution of the structural parameters of two samples of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in the last 6 Gyr. The nearby sample of BCGs consists of 69 galaxies from the WINGS survey spanning a redshift range of 0.04 z 0.07. The intermediate-redshift (0.3 z 0.6) sample is formed by 20 BCGs extracted from the Hubble

Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) have high and homogeneous luminosities, making them an essential tool for measuring distances on a cosmic scale, useful to gauge the geometry and evolution of the Universe. However, the nature of the progenitor system of these explosions is still uncertain. The consensus view is that SNe Ia originate from an accreting

With the use of N-body calculations, the numbers and properties of escaping stars from low-N (N= 100 and 1000) young embedded star clusters prior to gas expulsion are studied over the first 5 Myr of their existence. Besides the numbers of stars, different initial radii and binary populations are also examined as well as virialized and collapsing

CoRoT and Kepler missions are collecting data of solar-like oscillating stars of unprecedented quality. Moreover, thanks to the length of the time series, we are able to study their seismic variability. In this work we use numerical simulations based on the last 3 solar cycles to analyze the light curves as a function of the line-of-sight

We report the detection of a pair of degree-long tidal tails associated with the globular cluster Palomar 14, using images obtained at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. We reveal a power-law departure from a King profile at large distances to the cluster center. The density map constructed with the optimal matched filter technique shows a nearly

We report on the discovery and the timing analysis of the first eclipsing accretion-powered millisecond X-ray pulsar (AMXP): SWIFT J1749.4-2807. The neutron star rotates at a frequency of ~517.9 Hz and is in a binary system with an orbital period of 8.8 hr and a projected semimajor axis of ~1.90 lt-s. Assuming a neutron star between 0.8 and 2.2 M