We present the first results of a pilot study aimed at understanding the influence of bars on the evolution of galaxy discs through the study of their stellar content. We examine here the kinematics, star formation history, mass-weighted, luminosity-weighted and single stellar population (SSP) equivalent ages and metallicities for four galaxies

To determine the star formation histories of dwarf galaxies we use fossil methods. Compared to the color-magnitude diagrams analyzes, which are well tested and widely accepted, the studies of integrated spectra are still young. In order to assess their capabilities and limitations, we compare the results of three publicly available star formation

Samples of line-of-sight velocities and metallicities for hundreds individual red giant branch stars in Milky Way satellite galaxies have been obtained in the recent past thanks to wide-area multi-object spectrographs on 8 m-10 m class telescopes. These samples have greatly improved our knowledge of the large scale metallicity properties and the

Aims: We present constraints on the thermodynamical structure of the chromosphere from ground-based observations of the Ca ii H line profile near and off the solar limb. Methods: We obtained a slit-spectrograph data set of the Ca ii H line with a high signal-to-noise ratio in a field of view extending 20'' across the limb. We analyzed the spectra

We present the results from the spectroscopic follow-up of WR140 (WC7 + O4-5) during its last periastron passage in january 2009. This object is known as the archetype of colliding wind binaries and has a relatively large period (~=8 years) and eccentricity (~=0.89). We provide updated values for the orbital parameters, new estimates for the WR and

The dwarf elliptical galaxies (dEs) are more luminous than dwarf spheroidals and fainter than "normal" ellipticals. In this paper I investigate the interconnection between these three families of early-type galaxies by studying their stellar populations properties. Some dwarf ellipticals have strong metallicity and age gradients, up to - 0.5 dex