Context. A detailed study of the Galactic bulge stellar population necessarily requires an accurate representation of the interstellar extinction, particularly toward the Galactic plane and center, where severe and differential reddening is expected to vary on sub-arcmin scales. Although recent infrared surveys have addressed this problem by providing extinction maps across the whole Galactic bulge area, dereddened color-magnitude diagrams near the plane and center appear systematically undercorrected, prompting the need for higher resolution. These undercorrections affect any stellar study sensitive to color (e.g., star formation history analyses via color-magnitude diagram fitting), either making them inaccurate or limiting them to small and relatively stable extinction windows where this value is low and better constrained. Aims. This study is aimed at providing a high-resolution (2 arcmin to ∼10 arcsec) color excess map for the VVV bulge area in J − Ks color. Methods. We used the MW-BULGE-PSFPHOT catalogs, sampling ∼300 deg2 across the Galactic bulge (|l| < 10° and −10° < b <  5°) to isolate a sample of red clump and red giant branch stars, for which we calculated the average J − Ks color in a fine spatial grid in (l, b) space. Results. We obtained an E(J − Ks) map spanning the VVV bulge area of roughly 300 deg2, with the equivalent of a resolution between ∼1 arcmin for bulge outskirts (l <  6°) to below 20 arcsec within the central |l| < 1°, and below 10 arcsec for the innermost area (|l| < 1° and |b| < 3°).

We present the star formation history (SFH) of the Sextans dwarf spheroidal galaxy based on deep archive B,I photometry taken with Suprime-Cam at Subaru telescope focusing our analysis on the inner region of the galaxy, fully located within the core radius. Within the errors of our SFH we have not detected any metallicity gradient along the considered radial distance interval. As a main result of this work we can state that the Sextans dwarf spheroidal stopped forming stars less than ∼ 1.3 Gyr after Big Bang in correspondance to the end of the reionization epoch. We have been able to constrain the duration of the main burst of star formation to ∼ 0.6 Gyr. From the calculation of the mechanical luminosity released from supernovae (SNe) during the brief episode of star formation, there are strong indications that SNe could have played an important role in the fate of Sextans, by removing almost completely the gas component, so preventing a prolonged star formation.

Aims. We produce a clean and well-characterised catalogue of objects within 100 pc of the Sun from the Gaia Early Data Release 3. We characterise the catalogue through comparisons to the full data release, external catalogues, and simulations. We carry out a first analysis of the science that is possible with this sample to demonstrate its potential and best practices for its use. Methods. Theselection of objects within 100 pc from the full catalogue used selected training sets, machine-learning procedures, astrometric quantities, and solution quality indicators to determine a probability that the astrometric solution is reliable. The training set construction exploited the astrometric data, quality flags, and external photometry. For all candidates we calculated distance posterior probability densities using Bayesian procedures and mock catalogues to define priors. Any object with reliable astrometry and a non-zero probability of being within 100 pc is included in the catalogue. Results. We have produced a catalogue of 331 312 objects that we estimate contains at least 92% of stars of stellar type M9 within 100 pc of the Sun. We estimate that 9% of the stars in this catalogue probably lie outside 100 pc, but when the distance probability function is used, a correct treatment of this contamination is possible. We produced luminosity functions with a high signal-to-noise ratio for the main-sequence stars, giants, and white dwarfs. We examined in detail the Hyades cluster, the white dwarf population, and wide-binary systems and produced candidate lists for all three samples. We detected local manifestations of several streams, superclusters, and halo objects, in which we identified 12 members of Gaia Enceladus. We present the first direct parallaxes of five objects in multiple systems within 10 pc of the Sun. Conclusions. We provide the community with a large, well-characterised catalogue of objects in the solar neighbourhood. This is a primary benchmark for measuring and understanding fundamental parameters and descriptive functions in astronomy.