We present observations of eight Galactic bulge microlensing events taken with the 1.0-m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope (JKT) on La Palma during 2000 June and July. The JKT observing schedule was optimized using a prioritizing algorithm to automatically update the target list. For most of these events we have sampled the light curves at times where no

Absolute and differential chemical abundances are presented for the largest group of massive stars in M 31 studied to date. These results were derived from intermediate resolution spectra of seven B-type supergiants, lying within four OB associations covering a galactocentric distance of 5-12 kpc. The results are mainly based on an LTE analysis

M31 has been monitored by the HRC and ACIS detectors aboard Chandra from 1999 to 2002. We report here a summary of properties of X-ray sources in M31 with a focus on an ongoing Chandra/HST program to monitor X-ray transients in M31. By comparing individual X-ray images, more than 100 sources were found to be variable (half the total number observed

R-band photometric and isophotal parameters for 171 late-type dwarf galaxies. For each galaxy the date of observation, seeing, adopted distance, equatorial coordinates, apparent magnitudes, central surface brightnesses, isophotal diameters and fractional light radii are given. For 46 galaxies, photometric and isophotal parameters derived from B

We have analyzed changes in the acoustic oscillation eigenfrequencies measured over the past 7 years by the GONG, MDI, and LOWL instruments. The observations span the period from 1994 to 2001 that corresponds to half a solar cycle, from minimum to maximum solar activity. These data were inverted to look for a signature of the activity cycle on the

The first theoretical investigation of the formation of the linearly polarized solar line spectrum of a complex atom, neutral titanium, is presented. The process of formation of line polarization is modeled by simply considering a plane-parallel layer of Ti I atoms illuminated from below by the photospheric radiation field, and accounting for the