Nuclear rings located within the central 1-2 kiloparsecs of barred spiral galaxies are often found to contain a large fraction of the total star formation taking place in a galaxy. Under the influence of a bar, gas can be channelled inwards along narrow ridges where shocks develop in the gas flow. We observe these shocks as dark dustlanes along the

Over recent decades there has been a proliferation of special-interest magazines dedicated to astronomy. In spite of the undoubted market for specialist feature articles on astronomy such articles appeal to a restricted sector of the general public and rarely appear in the daily or weekly press. I argue here that, apart from television documentary

We have compiled a new sample of 240 halo objects with accurate distance and radial velocity measurements, including globular clusters, satellite galaxies, field blue horizontal branch (FHB) stars and red giant stars from the Spaghetti survey. The new data lead to a significant increase in the number of known objects for Galactocentric radii beyond

The Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) is one of the three science instruments for ESA's far infrared and submillimetre observatory Herschel. In its photometry mode, it will simultaneously image two bands, 60-85 or 85-130μ m and 130-210μ m, over a field of view of ˜ 1.75'× 3.5', with full beam sampling in each band. In spectroscopy

OTELO, (OSIRIS Tunable Emission Line Object Survey), will survey emission line objects using OSIRIS tunable filters in selected atmospheric windows relatively free of sky emission lines. Different high latitude and low extinction sky regions with enough angular separations will be observed yielding a total area of 1-2 square degrees. A 5 σ depth of

OSIRIS (Optical System for Imaging and low Resolution Integrated Spectroscopy) is the optical Day one instrument for the GTC and the only Spanish Day One instrument. With both instrument and telescope schedules matched, OSIRIS will be available as soon as the GTC is scientifically operational. In this contribution an overview of the instrument at