... Luminous blue variable (LBV) stars are the most massive stars with 40-120 solar masses, which are passing the short stage of evolution losing their hydrogen envelopes before exploding as Supernovae. These are extremely rare objects, only about a dozen of the most massive LBVs are known in the Galaxy. ... In the spectral observations of stars with infrared circular nebulae, found in the Spitzer survey (24 microns), a new LBV star in the Galaxy was discovered. It was named MN112. ...

... Team . ... GRB mini-workshop 2006 . ... On April 8, 2005, an optical afterglow of the GRB 050408 was discovered with the SAO's telescopes (the 1-meter telescope Zeiss and 6-meter telescope BTA) within the framework of a joint BTA request (SAO RAS + IAA CSIC, Granada, Spain) on optical identification of gamma-ray bursts. We first detected a variable object only by our own data in the localization error-box reported by the space observatory HETE and then it was confirmed by our observations in SAO. ...