We summarise some recent results about nearby galactic bulges, relevant to their formation. We highlight a number of significant advances in our understanding of the surface brightness profiles, stellar populations, and especially the very centers of spirals. We also view our own Milky Way as if it were an external galaxy. Our main conclusions are

We present the 90-μm luminosity function of the Final Analysis of the European Large Area ISO Survey (ELAIS), extending the sample size of our previous analysis (Paper IV) by about a factor of 4. Our sample extends to z= 1.1, ~50 times the comoving volume of Paper IV, and 107.7 h-2L/Lsolar 1012.5. From our optical spectroscopy campaigns of the

We present the results from the 2002-2004 seasons of photometric monitoring of the eclipsing system KH 15D. The eclipse has continued to evolve in secular fashion, and the eclipses are now approximately 24 days in length, or half the period. A periodogram of the most recent data confirms the spectroscopic period of 48.38 days determined by Johnson

Not Available

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) integrated over an entire galaxy is an integral over all separate star-formation events. Since most stars form in star clusters with different masses the integrated IMF becomes an integral of the (universal or invariant) canonical stellar IMF over the star-cluster mass function. This integrated IMF is steeper

Recent results from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have resolved starbursts as collections of small young stellar clusters. We have elaborated tep{Melo04} a photometric catalogue of the young stellar clusters in the nuclear starburst of M82, observed with the HST WFPC2 in Hα (F656N) and continuum images. We identify 198 young super stellar clusters