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Within the context of a large project aimed at studying early F-, A- and late B-type stars, we present the abundance analysis of the photospheres of 21 members of the open cluster NGC 5460, an intermediate-age cluster () previously not studied with spectroscopy. Our study is based on medium- and high-resolution spectra obtained with the Fibre Large Array Multi Element Spectrograph (FLAMES) instrument of the European Southern Observatory/Very Large Telescope. We show that cluster members have a nearly solar metallicity and that there is evidence that the abundances of magnesium and iron are correlated with the effective temperature, exhibiting a maximum around = 10 500 K. No correlations are found between abundances and projected equatorial velocity, except for marginal evidence of barium being more abundant in slower than in faster rotating stars. We discovered two He-weak stars and a binary system where the hotter component is an HgMn star. We provide new estimates for the cluster distance ( pc), age (=) and mean radial velocity ( ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Results of the first polarimetric observations of Centaurs (5145) Pholus and (10199) Chariklo, and new observations of (2060) Chiron are presented together with the estimates of their absolute magnitudes. Observations were carried out at the 8m ESO Very Large Telescope in 2007–2008. They revealed noticeable negative polarization in the phase-angle range 0.5–4.4° with a minimum varying from −1% to −2.1% in the R band. All three objects show diverse polarization phase-angle behaviour, each distinctly different from that of transneptunian objects. We found evidence of surface heterogeneity for Chariklo while Chiron and Pholus appear to have rather homogeneous surfaces. Polarization phase behaviours of Chiron and Pholus are significantly different from any other Solar System bodies studied so far. A shift of negative polarization minima toward small phase angles seems to be a characteristic feature of polarization properties of Centaurs. Presence of a small amount of water frost on a dark surface is considered as one of the possible ways to explain these properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]