Until a few years ago, the common paradigm for the formation of Globular Clusters (GCs) was that they constitute a ‘simple stellar population’ in which all the stars were formed from a chemically homogeneous cluster medium within a relatively short interval of time, at the beginning of the galactic life. In recent years, the spectroscopic information on the low luminosity (turnoff) cluster stars have extended to the unevolved stars the recognition that chemical anomalies are a common feature of GCs and not an exception. This has provoked a revolution in the simple view of GC formation, and requires an adequate dynamical modelling including gas dynamics. It is by now well accepted that at least two different stellar components are common in most GCs. These are almost unequivocally identified with (i) a first stellar generation, which gave origin to stars of all masses; and (ii)) a second generation, born from the ejecta of the most massive asymptotic giant branch stars of the first generation, in the first 100–200 Myr from the first burst of star formation. A ‘third’ population is present only in some GCs, and is more difficult to be understood. It is characterized by stars having a huge helium content (Y ≃ 0.4, if stellar modelling is reasonable) and extreme chemical anomalies in the proton capture elements (Na, O, Al). The status of understanding of the GC properties, based on our most recent models of stellar evolution, is discussed.

We discuss SAURON absorption line strength maps of a sample of 24 early-type spirals, mostly Sa. From the Lick indices Hβ, Mgb and Fe 5015 we derive SSP-ages and metallicities. By comparing the scaling relations of Mg b and Hβ and central velocity dispersion with the same relation for the edge-on sample of Falcón-Barroso et al. (2002) we derive a picture in which the central regions of Sa galaxies contain at least 2 components: one (or more) thin, disc-like component, often containing recent star formation, and another, elliptical-like component, consisting of old stars and rotating more slowly, dominating the light above the plane. If one defines a bulge to be the component responsible for the light in excess of the outer exponential disc, then many Sa-bulges are dominated by a thin, disc-like component containing recent star formation.

We compare the results of applying different cluster detection methods to photometric data obtained for the Deep-1 field of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey. The poster can be downloaded at http://www.dark-cosmology.dk/~lisbeth/cfhtls_clusters.pdf

The far-ultra violet (6 – 13.6 eV) photons from the OB stars in Ultra-compact HII regions (UCHs) produce photo-dissociation regions (PDRs) at the interface between the ionized and the natal molecular material. In this paper, we show that carbon recombination lines (CRLs) at frequencies greater than a few GHz are detectable from these PDRs and such observations can be used to: (1) estimate the physical properties of the PDR material; (2) study the kinematics of the PDR material relative to the HII region gas; (3) constrain the magnetic fields in the vicinity of UCHs and (4) address the lifetime problem of UCHs.

We present a systematic observational study of 32 PNe that present point-symmetric structures, multiple bipolar outflows or other related features.

In dense stellar systems, dynamical interactions between objects inevitably lead to frequent formation of exotic stellar objects and multiple systems, thereby imposing new questions for the stellar evolution theory. The evolutionary path of such systems could be different from that of the unperturbed objects, therefore, we must re-evaluate their evolutionary treatment to clarify their consequent dynamical evolution. We review briefly the classes of important dynamical encounters and discuss several post-encounter outcomes that may require more detailed attention or development of a new treatment in stellar evolution: evolution of complex merger products, spun-up stars, binaries with stripped giants and triples.

Superclusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound structures of the Universe. Numerical simulations indicate that a significant fraction of baryonic matter could be located in supercluster (SC) scales in the form of a warm/hot plasma. The sensitivity and resolution of the VSA interferometer at Teide observatory allow us to search for evidence of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE). We have published evidence for such a plasma towards the center of the Corona Borealis Supercluster (CrB-SC), Génova-Santos et al. (2005). Two large decrements in the intensity of the signal measured by VSA at 33 GHz (CrB-B and H) subtending an angle of about 25' could be indicative of a concentration of baryonic matter comparable to thousands of galaxies. This matter could be in the form of a plasma of temperature ~105 − 107 K where no clusters of galaxies have been identified. No other similar spots have been found in the VSA fields observed to measure the CMB primordial power spectrum of fluctuations, Rubiño-Martin et al. (2003), and suggests that this is indeed a very particular feature of the CrB-SC of galaxies. Additional data obtained with the MITO telescope of CrB-H also support this VSA finding Battistelli et al. (2006), and could be related to warm/hot plasma in the SC. We would expect a galaxy population to be associated with such a plasma, as it is well known to occur in clusters of galaxies where the SZE has been measured, Lancaster et al. (2005). However, the absence of X-ray emission in the ROSAT images in the CrB-SC SZ spots suggests that if there is a galaxy population linked to the plasma it may have a peculiar spatial distribution. We obtained photometry of CrB-SC region using the data base from SDSS DR4, covering a total of 15o2 in the CrB-SC area. We built a catogue with 121251 galaxies down a selection criterion based on galaxies colours 0.2 ≤ r − i ≤ 0.6 and δ(g, r, i) ≤ |0.2| errors. In order to study the behaviour of differents regions in the CrB-SC, four regions were measured that belongs it, two regions not associated with overdensity, A2065, and CrB-H with 30' radius for each ones. The completeness magnitude is R ≤ 21. A photometric study produced colour-magnitude diagrams where we can detect evidence that many of these galaxies belong to the same system. The excess in the number density of galaxies appears to be larger in CrB-H where the strongest CMB temperature decrement was found. The number of galaxies in it is a factor ~1.5 lower than A2065 and ~2.5 highest that the SC background field. This resembles the typical number of galaxies in clusters of galaxies. However, it appears these galaxies are more broadly distributed than in the well known clusters of this SC. It is possible that the hot plasma causing the SZ spot is indeed associated with a new large concentration of galaxies unidentified in the SC.

We present a preliminary analysis of the stellar populations in the central parsecs of a sample of 22 Seyfert 2 galaxies, based on a careful separation of nebular emission and stellar light in high-spatial resolution HST-STIS spectra. 10% of the surveyed nuclei display stellar populations of intermediate age, ∼1-2 Gyr old, whereas the remaining targets appear to be evenly split between objects showing only very old stellar populations and nuclei requiring also an additional blue featureless component, which we characterise by means of very young, few-Myr-old stars. The small fraction of stellar population of intermediate age seems to argue against the presence of such a young component, however, since the short lifetime of O-stars would imply recurrent star-formation episodes and the build-up over the last 1-2 Gyr of a detectable intermediate-age population. Additionally, a correlation between the luminosity of such a blue component and the emission from highly-ionised species, together with the general absence of Wolf-Rayet features, further suggests that the featureless continuum arises from the central engine rather than from star-forming regions. We discuss our results in the framework of the unification paradigm and of models for star formation close to supermassive black holes.

The Virgo Cluster spiral NGC 4569 is known for its compact starburst in the core and unusual outflow of Hα emitting gas perpendicular to the galaxy disk. Recent radio polarimetric observations with the Effelsberg telescope reveal huge magnetized outflows. Preliminary results of our XMM-Newton observations uncover not only hot gas in the disk but also an extensive X-ray envelope around it. We investigate the possibility of starburst-induced galactic outflows in various gas phases and cluster influence on the galaxy evolution.

We are currently undertaking a systematic search of new Galactic planetary nebulae (PNe) in the IPHAS (INT Photometric H-Alpha Survey) data. We employ two methods to search for PNe of different sizes: a visual search through continuum subtracted H-Alpha mosaics for extended PNe and a (point) source catalog based search for small diameter PNe. Here we present the methodology and first results of the small diameter PNe search.

I briefly present the most relevant observational facts supporting the idea of one or more star formation episodes in globular clusters.

We investigate some implications of having two star formation episodes in globular clusters, rather than the traditional single-burst approximation. Evidence for more than one stellar generation is accumulating in observations of abundances of elements lighter than iron in globular cluster stars, and is thought to imply some self-enrichment of the globular cluster gas. In particular, we explore models based on the assumption that the self-enrichment comes from an early generation of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars.

Galaxies in groups and clusters often experience strong tidal forces from its neighbors, expelling a significant amount of matter (stars and gas) to the surrounding environment, giving rise to ‘tidal debris’ features. We present the first experiments in a program of identification of substructures of extragalactic tidal debris elements in images from the HST archive, using wavelet-based multiresolution analysis. Tidal structures in two compact groups of galaxies, HCG 79 (Seyfert's Sextet) and HCG 92 (Stephan's Quintet) have been analyzed so far.

We present a brief, comparative, study of the morphology of a sample of 9 late type, star forming, local galaxies, as seen in different bands. The objects are present in the “The Hα Galaxy Survey” by James et al., 2004 (J04 hereafter), in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (“SDSSS”, York et al., 2000), and also in data from GALEX (Martin et al. 2005). We tested the pixel to pixel proportionality v. Hα of images in broad bands from FUV to NIR. We also analyzed the differences in the radial profiles of light in different bands. Finally, we also measured several parameters of the morphology of the distributions of light, as detected in bands of SDSS (u,g,r,i,z), GALEX (NUV, FUV) and in R and Hα from J04, aiming to test which bands better mimic the spatial distribution of the SF as traced by Hα. Our goal is to acquire as accurate a determination as possible of the spatial distribution of the massive star formation in local galaxies, to compare with the analogous distribution in galaxies at increasing redshift.

We have found massive clumps without any sign of active star formation in the AFGL 333 cloud. We present a study of the physical and chemical properties of the AFGL 333 cloud.

We present the results of a small mid-infrared imaging survey of planetary nebulae. Of 21 objects observed 19 were resolved. Only in NGC 6210 was there a marked contrast between the dust morphology and the emission line morphology. For all the other objects the dust and the gas must be well mixed even in the faint lobes of bipolar objects such as Fg3, Pe1-7, and NGC 6881.

Blue stragglers stars (BSS) define a sparsely populated sequence extending to higher luminosity than the turnoff point of normal main sequence stars in the color magnitude diagrams of stellar aggregates, thus mimicking a rejuvenated (more massive) stellar population. The nature of these stars has been a puzzle for many years and their formation mechanism is not completely understood, yet. Two mechanisms have been proposed to produce BSS: (i) the mass transfer in binary systems; and ((ii) the merger of two stars induced by stellar interactions. In this contribution we schematically report on the main properties of BSS in globular clusters (GCs) in the light of the most recent photometric and spectroscopic observations. These results, combined with dynamical simulations, indicate that both the proposed formation mechanisms play an important role in the production of BSS in GCs.

We have derived radial sky-subtracted surface brightness profiles of a sample of 42 face-on nearby early-type spiral galaxies, classified as unbarred, from SDSS data as well as our own observations (INT/WFC) at La Palma. A key objective was to derive the fraction of truncated profiles. We find that only a small minority 7% of the galaxies are obviously truncated within the limits of the measured surface brightness range, while some 20% show exponential disc profiles but with a shallower inner portion near the centre: classical “Freeman Type II” profiles (Freeman, 197). Half of the discs show a single unbroken exponential (“type I”) brightness profile with no evidence of truncation out to the edge of detectability, while the remainder show “antitruncations”: external profiles less steep than those of the internal disc (Type III). A general profile classification scheme based on these and other recent related measurements is presented, and will be of use in probing disc formation scenarios.

We report the preliminary results of the study on the infrared properties of ultracompact (UC) H II regions in our Galaxy and in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) based on the GLIMPSE (the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire) and SAGE (Surveying the Agents of a Galaxy's Evolution) data, respectively. We found that ~60% of the Galactic UC H II regions do not have IR counterparts. Large extinction and very strong stellar winds evacuating H II regions from dust may explain this result. The same effect is observed in the LMC. One of the goals of this research is to develop a means of identifying UC H IIs based on their mid-IR properties, e.g. positions on color-color and color-magnitude plots and/or shape of spectral energy distributions. GLIMPSE showed that bow shocks, protostellar jets/outflows, and bubbles are common phenomena in massive star formation regions (MSFRs).

This work is a preliminary result of our attempt to examine the use of SFR in the study of galaxy evolution. For this purpose we use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 2 (SDSS DR2) Abazajian et al. (2004) and the SFR Catalogue generated from this data set by Brinchmann et al. (2004) and Kaufmann et al. (2003). Following Kewley et al. (2001) we use the Diagnostic Diagram, log ([OIII]/Hβ) vs log ([NII]/Hα), to separate the star forming galaxies from other emission lines sources such as AGN. Choosing only those with S/N > 3 out of the Brinchmann et al. (2004) catalogue, we arrive at about 200 thousand galaxies as our starting SFR subsample. With 0.05 < z < 0.22 and limit at r = 17.77, the subsample can be used to reconstruct the properties of a volume limited sample of galaxies with M* = 6 1010Modot. We benefit from the fact that Brinchmann et al. (2004) SFR Catalogue has already been aperture-corrected using the likelihood distribution P(SFR/Li/colour) scheme. For the environment, we use the data generated by Kaufmann et al. (2003), and arrive at about 40 thousand target galaxies. In this work the environment is characterised by the number (N=0-30) of neighbouring galaxies within a projected radius of 2 Mpc and velocity di.erence of 500km/s from each target galaxy, and the magnitude limit is 14.5 < r < 17.77.