The Hipparcos mission has made it possible to constrain the positions of nearby field stars in the colour-magnitude diagram with very high accuracy. These positions can be compared with the predictions of stellar evolutionary calculations to provide information on the basic parameters of the stars: masses, radii, effective temperatures, ages, and

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The brighter water masers of NGC 1068 appear to trace molecular gas in a parsec-scale disk surrounding the central engine. We find evidence that these masers are reverberating in response to a central, common pump source, presumably the central engine. Firstly, the luminosities of individual maser features are correlated on time-scales as fine as

We have acquired imaging of the bipolar outflow M2-9 in the transitions [O III] λ5007, H I λ6563, [N II] λ6584, and [S II] λλ6717, 6731. As a result, we are able to map both excitation and density over the face of the nebula. We find that underlying densities in the lobes increase to ne~1.6x103 cm-3 at distances rp~12"-15" from the central star