To preserve the exceptional sky quality of the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, the Spanish Government has subsidized the cost of a programme of streetlighting adaptation on La Palma aimed at minimizing potential light pollution. New non-polluting light fixtures and low-pressure sodium vapour lamps have been used to modified existing lighting

We present high-quality (subarcsecond) optical narrowband CCD images of the planetary nebula NGC 6881, which reveal a highly collimated bipolar structure. A careful examination of the [N II] image and of the [N II]/[O III] and [N II]/Hα ratio images shows that NGC 6881 is a quadrupolar planetary nebula, that is, a twice bipolar planetary nebula

Since the launch of SOHO, the Solar Heliospheric Orbital Observatory, the helioseismic observations are nearly uninterrupted. The GOLF instrument (A. Gabriel et al., 1997) measures the mean velocity integrated over the disk. The autocorrelation function of this velocity shows two main features: Firstly, the initial decrease of the peak amplitudes

A ring-diagram analysis technique has been applied to a region of the Sun of about 15 deg^2 area close to the disk center at dates chosen for several solar rotations in 1996: April 5, May 1, May 28, June 27, July 23, August 20, August 21, and September 18. The horizontal velocity flows inferred directly beneath the solar surface have thus been

We estimate the typical spectrum of spatial fluctuations of intensity due to the penumbral filaments. High angular resolution continuum images are used (cut-off frequencies equivalent to 0.28" wavelength of about 5257 Å). The amplitude of the observed spectra follows the modulation transfer function of our optical system. In other words, the

We report the detection of the slow-moving wind into which the compact supernova remnant SN 1997ab is expanding. Echelle spectroscopy provides clear evidence for a well-resolved narrow (full width at zero intensity, FWZI ~180 km s^-1) P Cygni profile, both in Hα and Hβ, superimposed on the broad emission lines of this compact supernova remnant