During the 1987 February 23rd night, astronomers observed the explosion of a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The exploded star was the blue supergiant Sanduleak (Sk) − 69o202, with a mass of 20 solar masses, and its explosion produced the supernova remnant SN 1987A. From that moment, SN 1987A was observed with
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Shock waves are ubiquitous phenomena in astrophysics, occurring in a long list of different environments, from our Solar System to extragalactic and cosmological scales. Astrophysical shocks are particularly important since they occur in extreme conditions which can not be observed or reproduced on Earth. For instance, In the atmosphere of our planet the heating due to a traveling shock wave
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Most of the stars, mainly the low mass stars, produce their own magnetic field in their interior. The interaction between the magnetic field and stellar plasma is the cause of phenomena such as photosperic spots, faculae, protuberances, coronal mass ejections, and flares. The study of this activity is important both because it reveals how intense magnetic fields interact with high-temperature
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From the large number of exoplanets discovered by missions such as Kepler and CoRoT, it is clear that the presence of planets is a common feature in stars of our Galaxy. In particular, it has been estimated that on average each low mass star has one planet. Planets formation is thus an ubiquitous phenomenon across the Milky Way. It is
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OB associations are objects of great importance, since they contain a rich population of OB stars. Despite their paucity, OB stars have a strong impact on the evolution of their parental clouds, nearby stars, and the whole Galaxy. For instance, their intense UV emission affects the evolution of the parental cloud and the star formation process in it, sometimes triggering
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In the last few years, many space missions and ground-based surveys, discovered more than 4000 exoplanets, especially using the transit and radial velocity methods. These two methods combined, give us a first estimation of the bulk density of the planets. In order to have a deeper understanding on the planetary characteristics and history, we also need to study their atmospheres.
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In the Milky Way one of the main modes of star formation is in stellar clusters, which remain associated with their parental cloud for about 5-10 million years. This makes the star forming regions complex targets, characterised by rich stellar populations packed into small regions, sometime even with massive stars, and clouds whose morphology and properties are affected by the
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