The best studied gravitational lens is the Twin QSO Q0957+561, and as a result of recent advances in observations and modelling, a ten percent measurement of the Hubble constant is attainable. We discuss in detail this system and review the perspectives in a near future.

The tables list positions, sizes and photometry in V and R band of extended objects found in fields, which include a nearby interacting galaxy. The tables' filenames are a combination of the table number and the interacting galaxy's name. The column-descriptions of all tables are identical, expect that the positional offsets refer to different

IAUC 6816 available at Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams.

We present high-resolution Utrecht Echelle Spectrograph spectra of the quasar PHL 957, obtained in order to study the foreground damped Ly-alpha (DLA) galaxy at z = 2.309. Measurements of absorption lines lead to accurate abundance determinations of Fe, S, and N, which complement measurements of Zn, Cr, and Ni already available for this system. We

We have mapped spectrophotometrically the star--forming regions in the center of the nearby SBm galaxy NGC 4214 with the aim of analyzing the spatial distribution of some of its physical properties (density, excitation, emission line intensity, extinction) and their relationship with the distribution and evolutionary state of the stellar population

Comet Hale-Bopp (1995 O1) has been intensely monitored with the 82cm IAC-80 Telescope at Teide Observatory, Tenerife, Spain. Multicolour photometry taken on various nights in mid-August 1995 shows that the inner coma was redder than solar colours, with a power law spectrum of index ~ -3.5, consistent with dust scattering. A large change in the