Among the newly discovered features of multiple stellar populations in globular clusters (GCs), the cluster NGC 1851 harbours a double subgiant branch (SGB), that can be explained in terms of two stellar generations, only slightly differing in age, the younger one having an increased total C+N+O abundance. Thanks to this difference in the chemistry

We present new radial velocity (RV) measurements of old (horizontal branch) and intermediate-age (red clump) stellar tracers in the Carina dwarf spheroidal. They are based on more than 2200 low-resolution spectra collected with VIMOS at Very Large Telescope (VLT). The targets are faint (20 ≲ V ≲ 21.5 mag), but the accuracy at the faintest limit is

Despite their activity, low-mass stars are of particular importance for the search of exoplanets by the means of Doppler spectroscopy, as planets with lower masses become detectable. We report on the discovery of a planetary companion around HD 180617, a bright (J = 5.58 mag), low-mass (M = 0.45M⊙) star of spectral type M2.5 V. The star, located at

We describe Castalia, a proposed mission to rendezvous with a Main Belt Comet (MBC), 133P/Elst-Pizarro. MBCs are a recently discovered population of apparently icy bodies within the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which may represent the remnants of the population which supplied the early Earth with water. Castalia will perform the

In May 2001 over 100 astronomers flew in from around the globe for an astronomical research conference on the central kiloparsec of starbursts and AGN, organised by the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, and in fact the first major scientific conference organised wholly on La Palma.

We report new near-IR integral field spectroscopy of the central starburst region of the barred spiral galaxy M83 obtained with Cambridge Infra-Red Panoramic Survey Spectrograph (CIRPASS) on Gemini-South, which we analyse in conjunction with GHαFaS Fabry-Perot data, an Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) IRIS2 Ks-band image, and near- and mid-IR