Two data series of disk integrated solar irradiance, taken by the Variability of the solar IRradiance and Gravity Oscillations (VIRGO) experiment on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SoHO) mission, corresponding to epochs of minimum and maximum solar activity have been analysed in order to study the background signal of the associated

We describe new methods of analysis that have been developed in order to make optimal use of the stellar spectral data obtained during the course of follow-up medium-resolution observations of color-selected stars from the ``Century Survey.'' The initial selection of stars in the stellar component of the Century Survey is based on broadband V and R

We describe the progress of a large optical and near-infrared imaging study of a complete sample of 57 spiral galaxies. We have obtained B, I, K' and Hα imaging to map stellar populations and massive star formation (SF) across the arm and interarm regions, in order to study the distribution of mass and SF in these different and distinct

We present a deep, wide-field optical survey of the young stellar cluster Alpha Per, in which we have discovered a large population of candidate brown dwarfs. Subsequent infrared photometric follow-up shows that the majority of them are probable or possible members of the cluster, reaching to a minimum mass of 0.035 Msun. We have used this list of

A good example of finding a signal buried in noise, a common problem in Astrophysics, is the search for stellar oscillations in the acoustic power spectrum of solar-like stars. In this work it is shown that it is possible to find this type of signal in the power spectrum of stellar oscillations if the peaks are ``almost'' equally spaced in

The varying global distribution of stars, or specifically, their concentration Cr_e, within elliptical galaxies and spiral galaxy bulges is intimately related to the mass of their central supermassive black holes (Mbh), such that log (Mbh/Msun) = 6.81(±0.95)Cr_e + 5.03±0.41. This correlation has a Spearman correlation coefficient rs=0.91, and a