The origin of the far-infrared emission from the nearby radio galaxy M87 remains a matter of debate. Some studies find evidence of a far-infrared excess due to thermal dust emission, whereas others propose that the far-infrared emission can be explained by synchrotron emission without the need for an additional dust emission component. We observed M87 with PACS and SPIRE as part of the Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey (HeViCS). We compare the new Herschel data with a synchrotron model based on infrared, submm and radio data to investigate the origin of the far-infrared emission. We find that both the integrated SED and the Herschel surface brightness maps are adequately explained by synchrotron emission. At odds with previous claims, we find no evidence of a diffuse dust component in M87.

We present results from a study of the SFH of a sample of LSB galaxies around the HDF-S. For the selection of the LSB galaxy candidates we used color–color diagrams, from which we selected the candidates based on their different location in comparison to the HSB galaxy redshift tracks. We compared measured spectra to synthetic SEDs from synthesis evolution models. We were able to fit SEDs in the range of 2 to 5 Gyr to the spectra of the LSB galaxies, while applying the same method to a sample of HSB galaxies resulted in an averaged stellar population of about 10 to 14 Gyr. Therefore, LSB galaxies tend to show much younger averaged stellar populations. This implies that the major star formation event of LSB galaxies took place at a redshift of z ~ 0.2 to 0.4 while for HSB galaxies this tends to be at z ~ 2 to 4.

We present first results of our study of the interplay between the 106 K, 104 K, 102 K gas phases in the supergiant shell LMC 4.

Based on measurements with the ORFEUS far UV echelle spectrograph, we present the first detection of H2 in absorption in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in the spectrum of the star LH 10:3120.