We present the first results from a large-area (~80deg×20deg), sparsely sampled, two-filter (B and R) imaging survey toward the Canis Major stellar overdensity, which is claimed to be a disrupting Milky Way satellite galaxy. Using stellar color-magnitude diagrams reaching to B~22 mag, we provide a first delineation of its surface density

Available from the Minor Planet Center.

After the recent reports of activity of the accreting millisecond pulsar XTE J1751-305 (ATELs #1045, #1046 and #1051) we obtained another Swift/XRT (~4.3ksec) observation of the field starting on April 11th 2007 23:59. The source was not detected with a 2-10 keV upper limit of ~5E-14 erg/ cm2/s, corresponding to a luminosity of 3.8E32 (d/8kpc)**2

Context: Optical novae have recently been identified as the major class of supersoft X-ray sources in M 31 based on ROSAT and early XMM-Newton and Chandra observations. Aims: This paper reports on a search for X-ray counterparts of optical novae in M 31 based on archival Chandra HRC-I and ACIS-I as well as XMM-Newton observations of the galaxy

Context: Over the last decade a series of results have lent support to the hypothesis of the existence of a long thin bar in the Milky Way with a half-length of 4.5 kpc and a position angle of around 45°. This is apparently a very different structure from the triaxial bulge of the Galaxy. Aims: In this paper, we analyse the stellar distribution in

We have studied the optical spectra of a sample of 28 O- and early B-type stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 22 of which are associated with the young star forming region N11. Our observations sample the central associations of LH9 and LH10, and the surrounding regions. Stellar parameters are determined using an automated fitting method (Mokiem