The Nuker model, when applied to the inner regions of ``core'' galaxies, is shown to produce systematic biases in the determination of the core ``break-radii''. These radii can easily be (and often have been, see Trujillo et al. 2003) over-estimated by more than 100%. Moreover, due to curvature in the outer profiles of early-type galaxies (i.e

The Ca II triplet is one of the most frequently measured features for deriving stellar metallicities from moderate resolution spectroscopy of red giants in old and metal poor systems. With the advent of 8m class telescopes, this indicator becomes of invaluable help in deriving metallicities for large samples of faint stars in the Local Group, and

We have calculated the evolution of a 0.49 Msolar hydrogen deficient white dwarf up to very low effective temperatures. The final model has been obtained by calculating the evolution of a H-deficient star from the extreme horizontal branch (EHB) up to the white dwarf regime, without going through the asymptotic giant branch (AGB). Progenitor stars

This work explore the formation and evolution of hydrogen-deficient post-AGB white dwarfs. To this end, we compute the complete evolution of an initially 2.7 M sun star from the ZAMS through the thermally pulsing and mass-loss phases to the white dwarf stage. Particular attention is given to the chemical abundance changes during the whole evolution

Here, we discussed our recent results of elemental abundance survey of Galactic disk based on 181 F- and G-type dwarfs (published by Reddy et al. 2003, MNRAS, 340, 304). Using high-resolution and high signal-to-noise spectra we obtained quantitative abundances for 27 elements: C, N, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, S, K, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Sr

Using a high resolution spectrum of the secondary star in the Low Mass X-ray Binary (LMXB) A0620-00 we have derived the stellar parameters and the veiling caused by the accretion disk in a consistent way. We have used a χ 2 minimization procedure to explore a grid of 600000 synthetic spectra computed for a plausible range of both stellar and