... English (Australia) . ... Today, a team of astronomers of the Geneva Observatory [1] are announcing the discovery of no less than eight new, very-low mass companions to solar-type stars. ... This repartition of observed planetary masses (and low-mass brown dwarfs) strongly suggests that the maximum mass for giant exoplanets is less than 10 Jupiter masses. ... The mass units for the exoplanets used in this text are 1 Jupiter mass = 3.35 Saturn masses = 318 Earth masses; 1 Saturn mass = 95 Earth...

Next: Modes of Operation Up: CCD Scientific Performance Previous: Field of View . Thermal excitation of charge carriers from the valence to the conduction band creates a dark current signal which may vary with position in the array, and also has temporal shot noise variation. ... In a device devoid of localized defects which give rise to individual dark current spikes , most dark current arises from electrons generated at interface states at the surface. ...

... Abstract . ... The Ages of Globular Clusters and the Population II Distance Scale . ... HST/FGS Astrometric Search for Young Planets Around Beta Pic and AU Mic . ... Luminous and dark matter in disk galaxies from strong lensing and stellar kinematics . ... WFPC2 Imaging of Fomalhaut b: Determining its orbit and testing for H-alpha emission . ... Globular clusters are the oldest structures within the Milky Way that are directly accessible to observation. ... Past weeks: . ...

... In this poster I give special emphasis for the Balmer-line emission and H2O circumstellar masers, for which we have traced a long-term variability. ... The H2 O masers from both groups flare from time to time. ... 2 3 A Low-Mass Companion as a Source of Sho cks As a basis of a discussion, I propose another explanation for the lack of radio continuum and for the rare H­H2O episodes in the `transient' H2O source, namely, impact of a shock provoked by a low-mass companion (a planet?) to the Mira star. ...