In this contribution, several aspects of the discovery of the Milky Way hosting a central bar are briefly reviewed, as well as some minimal introduction about the barred galaxies in the local Universe. The bulk of the contribution is however dedicated to the two main lines of thought about the true nature of the Galactic bar: that which argues for

In this paper we propose an inversion strategy for the analysis of spectropolarimetric measurements taken by Hinode in the quiet Sun. The Spectro-Polarimeter of the Solar Optical Telescope aboard Hinode records the Stokes spectra of the FeI line pair at 630.2nm with unprecendented angular resolution, high spectral resolution, and high sensitivity

Here we present our investigation of the kinematic structure of the broad emission line region (BLR) in a sample of 14 single-peaked Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), which have been previously observed in the X-ray (Fe Kα line) and where, according to the X-ray emission, a disk geometry is expected. To explain the BLR complex structure we apply a two

Context. Stray light caused by scattering on optical surfaces and in the Earth's atmosphere degrades the spatial resolution of observations. Whereas post-facto reconstruction techniques are common for 2D imaging and spectroscopy, similar options for slit-spectrograph data are rarely applied. Aims: We study the contribution of stray light to the two

Using the combined capabilities of the large near-infrared Palomar/DEEP-2 survey, and the superb resolution of the Advanced Camera for Surveys HST camera, we explore the size evolution of 831 very massive galaxies (M* >= 1011h-270Msolar) since z ~ 2. We split our sample according to their light concentration using the Sérsic index n. At a given

We present optical observations of a sample of 57 spiral galaxies and describe the procedures followed to reduce the data. We have obtained images in the optical B and I broad bands, as well as in Hα, with moderate spatial resolution and across wide enough fields to image the complete disks of the galaxies. In addition, we observed 55 of our sample