We present Rossiter-McLaughlin observations of the transiting super-Earth 55 Cnc e collected during six transit events between 2012 January and 2013 November with HARPS and HARPS-N. We detect no radial velocity signal above 35 cm s–1 (3σ) and confine the stellar v sin i sstarf to 0.2 ± 0.5 km s–1. The star appears to be a very slow rotator

We determine rotation periods of a sample of 48 late F-type to mid-M dwarf stars using time series high-resolution spectroscopy of the Ca II H&K and H α chromospheric activity indicators. We find good agreement between the rotation periods obtained from each of these two indicators. An empirical relationship between the level of chromospheric

We present rotationally resolved spectra of asteroid 490 Veritas in the near-infrared (NIR) that show interesting differences. Dynamical arguments indicate that 490 Veritas is the main fragment of a recent (8.3 My) asteroidal break-up. We obtained NIR spectra (0.8-2.4 microns) on UT May 11, 2008, using the SpeX instrument on NASA's Infrared

Context. Luminous Galactic OH/IR stars have been identified as massive (>4-5 M⊙) asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars experiencing hot bottom burning and Li production. Their Rb abundances and [Rb/Zr] ratios, as derived from classical hydrostatic model atmospheres, are significantly higher than predictions from AGB nucleosynthesis models, posing a

The Magellanic Clouds (MCs) offer a unique opportunity to study the stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis of massive Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars in low metallicity environments where distances are known. Rubidium is a key element to distinguish between high mass AGB stars and low mass AGB stars or other types of astronomical objects such as

RXTE PCA Bulge scans detected activity of what appeared to be a known source. However, based on the results presented below, and the report of a new INTEGRAL source IGR J17511-305 (Baldovin et al. ATEL #2196), the activity detected by RXTE is due to a new 245 Hz X-ray pulsar. The source was initially detected on 2009-09-11 at 17:50 UT as a rising