The astonishing images of protoplanetary disks from ALMA and SPHERE show planet-induced structures. At the same time, directly imaged planets in disks (e.g., PDS70) prove that planets form early, and accrete material from the disk. So far, only the Halpha/Hbeta emission lines probing this process were observed at low spectral resolution with MUSE-NFM. MAVIS will give us access to higher...
Comets are among the most pristine objects of the Solar System that retain information of the primordial material present in the early phases of the Solar System formation.
Spectroscopic investigation of emissions, which develop when heated by solar irradiation, is diagnostic of their surface composition, and reveals hints of the region where these comets formed. Important features due to...
Gravitational lensing acting as cosmic telescopes is allowing us to access high redshift galaxies at unprecedented small physical scales (tens of parsec) and faint luminosity, opening to the possibility of revealing the still elusive formation of globular clusters in the early Universe. Young stellar massive clusters are also the main sources of ionizing radiation and stellar feedback, likely...
HARMONI is the work-horse, first light, AO assisted, visible and near-infrared integral field spectrograph for ESO's Extremely Large Telescope, expected to start operations in 2027. At near-infrared wavelengths, HARMONI's AO systems will provide diffraction limited spectroscopy, with spatial resolution of 10 milli-arcseconds, and Strehl ratios of 30-50% with excellent sky coverage. Combined...
Low-mass stars show evidence of disk mass accretion during their early pre-main sequence evolution. Mass accretion heavily affects the disk dissipation and depends on several properties, including environmental conditions, such as the metallicity. As a result, the mass accretion vs metallicity relation deeply influences planet formation, as testified by the observed correlation between planet...
We introduce the role played by variable stars (RR Lyrae, Type II Cepheids) to trace old stellar populations across the Galactic spheroid. Moreover, we discuss the advantages in using standard candles that can provide individual distances with an accuracy better than 3% across the Galaxy and in nearby stellar systems. We also review recent findings concerning the use of variable stars to...
