Related papers: Ground-based variability surveys towards Centaurus…
Several astronomical surveys aimed at the investigation of the extragalactic components were carried out in order to map systematically the universe and its constituents. An excellent level of detail is needed, and it is possible only using…
We present the results from a three night, time-series study of the open cluster NGC 6791 using the Megacam wide-field mosaic CCD camera on the 6.5m MMT telescope. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the ability to obtain very high…
We present the widest-field resolved stellar map to date of the closest ($D\sim3.8$ Mpc) massive elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 (Centaurus A; Cen A), extending out to a projected galactocentric radius of $\sim150$ kpc. The dataset is part of…
We present the first results of the analysis of data collected during the 1998-99 observational campaign at the 1.3 meter McGraw-Hill Telescope, towards the Andromeda galaxy (M31), aimed to the detection of gravitational microlensing…
We investigate the limits of ground-based astrometry with adaptive optics using the core of the Galactic globular cluster M5. Adaptive optics systems provide near diffraction-limit imaging with the world's largest telescopes. The…
DIRECT is a project to obtain directly the distances to two Local Group galaxies, M31 and M33, which occupy a crucial position near the bottom of the cosmological distance ladder. As the first step of the DIRECT project we have searched for…
CONTEXT. Massive stars have high-multiplicity fractions, and many of them have still undetected components, thus hampering the study of their properties. AIMS. I study a sample of massive stars with high angular resolution to better…
Gravitational microlensing is a new technique for studying the surfaces of distant stars. A point mass lens, usually a low-mass star from the disk, will typically resolve the surface of a red giant in the Galactic bulge, as well as amplify…
Obtain time-series photometry of the very crowded central regions of Galactic globular clusters with better angular resolution than previously achieved with conventional CCDs on ground-based telescopes to complete, or improve, the census of…
Context: Alpha Centauri is our closest stellar neighbor, at a distance of only 1.3 pc, and its two main components have spectral types comparable to the Sun. This is therefore a favorable target for an imaging search for extrasolar planets.…
We have conducted a 1.5 year-long variability study of the stars in the Cygnus OB2 association, the region in the northern hemisphere with the highest density of optically visible massive stars. The survey was conducted using four pointings…
We have completed a 21-cm survey of a 600 square degree region of the Centaurus A group of galaxies at a redshift of ~500 km/s as part of a larger survey of the entire southern sky. This group of galaxies was recently the subject of a…
Context: The nearby pair of solar-type stars Alpha Centauri is a favorable target for an imaging search for extrasolar planets. Indications exist that the gravitational mass of Alpha Cen B could be higher than its modeled mass, the…
To a first approximation, the microlensing phenomenon is achromatic, and great advancement has been achieved in the interpretation of the achromatic signals, which among other achievements has led to the discovery and characterization of…
We present the optical photometric variability of 32 planet-hosting M dwarfs within 25 parsecs over timescales of months to decades. The primary goal of this project, ATLAS -- A Trail to Life Around Stars, is to follow the trail to life by…
Recent dynamical studies indicate that the possibility of an Earth-like planet around $\alpha\;$Cen A or B should be taken seriously. Such a planet, if it exists, would perturb the orbital astrometry by $<10 \ {\mu}\rm as$, which is…
Sirius has always attracted a lot of scientific interest, especially after the discovery of a companion white dwarf at the end of the 19th century. Very early on, the existence of a potential third body was put forward to explain some of…
Tidally stripped galaxy nuclei and luminous globular clusters (GCs) are important tracers of the halos and assembly histories of nearby galaxies, but are difficult to reliably identify with typical ground-based imaging data. In this paper…
Difference imaging provides a new way to discover gravitationally lensed quasars because few non-lensed sources will show spatially extended, time variable flux. We test the method on lens candidates in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)…
The image subtraction technique applied to study variable stars in globular clusters represented a leap in the number of new detections, with the drawback that many of these new light curves could not be transformed to magnitudes due to the…