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.

The bright star delta Sco has been considered a typical B0-type object for many years. Spectra of the star published prior to 1990 showed no evidence of emission, but only of short-term line profile variations attributed to nonradial pulsations. Speckle interferometric observations show that delta Sco is a binary system with a highly-eccentric

An analysis of the collapse of the Twin Towers is carried on with the aid of simple mechanical laws. The motion of the collapse front is calculated in terms of geometric and energetic quantities.

We present the results of a photometric CCD monitoring of the gravitational lens system UM 673 that took place from 1995 to 2000. In total, the doubly imaged quasar (QSO) was observed in the R band during 29 photometric nights, using optical telescopes with dimensions in the range 0.6-1.3 m. We detected a significant variability in the total light

We have obtained low resolution optical spectra of 15 isolated planetary mass objects (IPMOs) in the sigma Orionis cluster, and derived spectral types by comparison with nearby M and L dwarfs. The spectral types are in the range late M - mid L, in agreement with our expectations based on colors and magnitudes for bona fide members. Therefore, most

The BL Lacertae object AO 0235+16 is well known for its extreme optical and radio variability. New optical and radio data have been collected in the last four years by a wide international collaboration, which confirm the intense activity of this source: on the long term, overall variations of 5mag in the R band and up to a factor 18 in the radio