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Aims: A recent analysis of polarization measurements of HINODE SOT/SP in the quiet Sun pointed out very complex shapes of Stokes V profiles. Here we present the first classification of the SOT/SP circular polarization measurements with the aim of highlighting exhaustively the whole variety of Stokes V shapes emerging from the quiet Sun. Methods: k

As we celebrate the International Year of Astronomy, we have been working on four different projects with the goal of making astronomy more accessible to people with special needs. These projects are 1) an astronomy book and web site for blind people, 2) an open source software for people with motor disabilities, 3) a planetarium program for the

The functional form of the galaxy-wide stellar initial mass function is of fundamental importance for understanding galaxies. So far this stellar initial mass function (IMF) has been assumed to be identical to the IMF observed directly in star clusters. But because stars form predominantly in embedded groups rather than uniformly distributed over

We present a detailed analysis of all the X-ray data taken by the XMM-Newton satellite of a small sample of five Seyfert 1 galaxies: ESO 359-G19, HE 1143-1810, CTS A08.12, Mkn 110, and UGC 11763. Our aim is to characterize the different components of the material that print the absorption and emission features in the X-ray spectra of these objects

Aims: We present the analysis of the [α/Fe] abundance ratios for a large number of stars at several locations in the Milky Way bulge with the aim of constraining its formation scenario. Methods: We obtained FLAMES-GIRAFFE spectra (R = 22 500) at the ESO Very Large Telescope for 650 bulge red giant branch (RGB) stars and performed spectral synthesis