Basaltic asteroids, classified as V-type in all taxonomies, are quite rare among the asteroid population. They are spectrally similar to 4 Vesta and to the basaltic achondrite meteorites, specifically the Eucrites, the Diogenites and the Howardites, known as HED meteorites. It has been suggested that all these objects, V-type asteroids and HED

One-third of present-day spirals host optically visible strong bars that drive their dynamical evolution. However, the fundamental question of how bars evolve over cosmological times has yet to be resolved, and even the frequency of bars at intermediate redshifts remains controversial. We investigate the frequency of bars out to z ~ 1 drawing on a

We present the discovery of an L0 companion to the nearby M1.5 dwarf G 239-25, at a projected distance of 31 AU. It is the faintest companion discovered so far in our adaptive optics survey of all known M dwarfs within 12 pc, and it lies at the stellar/substellar limit. Given the assumed age of the primary star, the companion is likely an extremely

We investigate the nature of the substantial population of high-redshift galaxies with Js-Ks>=2.3 colors recently discovered as part of our Faint Infrared Extragalactic Survey (FIRES). This color cut efficiently isolates galaxies at z>2 with red rest-frame optical colors (``distant red galaxies'' [DRGs]). We select Js-Ks>=2.3 objects in both FIRES

This paper discusses the properties of the European Large Area ISO Survey (ELAIS) 15-μm quasars and tries to establish a robust method of quasar selection for future use within the Spitzer Wide-Area Infrared Extragalactic Survey (SWIRE) framework. The importance of good-quality ground-based optical data is stressed, both for the selection of

We present Very Large Telescope (VLT) UVES echelle spectrophotometry of the Orion nebula in the 3100-10400 Årange. We have measured the intensity of 555 emission lines, many of them corresponding to permitted lines of different heavy-element ions. This is the largest set of spectral emission lines ever obtained for a Galactic or extragalactic HII