Following the announcement of a new period of activity of the soft gamma-ray repeater SGR 1806-20 in 1996 November, we have performed follow-up observations of the IR counterpart, which has been proposed as a luminous blue variable or B[e] star. We have found that no variability larger than 0.1 mag in the K-band is present in the data. No variation

We present N, 8.7 mu m, 9.8 mu m 12.5 mu m and Q bolometry of 26 stars which were observed on the IRTF. These are primarily K giants which have been well measured at other wavelengths and are chosen to be single and non-variable. Hence the data presented provides a new homogeneous set of mid IR standards. As a test of part of the calibration

The Faint Object Spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is used to obtain spectra in the wavelength range lambda lambda 1150-4800 of three planetary nebulae in the Small Magellanic Cloud and 10 planetary nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This sample extends the sample of 12 objects previously observed with HST and reported in

We present two-dimensional spectroscopic observations of the circumnuclear region of Mrk 509. The spectra show extended (off-nuclear) broad Balmer emission ( {FWZI}>1 5,000 km s-1) in a region of about 8" in diameter (8 kpc if H0=50 km s-1 Mpc-1). These features are interpreted as reflected radiation coming from the unresolved active nucleus. The

We report optical spectroscopic observations of the radio-quiet quasar Kaz 102. We find impressive variations of the Hα emission line both in shape and intensity. Hα dimms by 40%, and develops a blue asymmetry within a few years. The continuum level also decreases by a similar amount. We discuss the results in terms of the kinematics of the BLR

We present new results from a study of recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations which provide the first strong evidence for the existence of a 'Doppler peak' localized in both angular scale and amplitude. This first estimate of the angular position of the peak is used to place a new direct limit on the curvature of the universe