Using various techniques of optical observations at the 6-m Russian telescope(emission-line images, long-slit and 3D spectroscopy), we have studiedlarge-scale morphology and kinematics of the ionized gas in the Seyfert galaxyMrk6. Having a significantly deeper images and spectra than those in previousworks, we have not only mapped the ionized gas in the stellar disc but alsofound a system of faint filaments elongated in the NE direction up to aprojected distance of 40 kpc (4.3R$_{25}$). Kinematics as well as an ionizationstate of the filament gas suggest the scenario that hard radiation of theactive nucleus illuminated the matter accreted from outside and orbiting almostorthogonally to the Mrk 6 stellar disc. A possible source of gas accretion isstill unknown, a deep image taken with the 1-m Byrakan Schmidt telescope doesnot show any stellar counterparts at the level of 27-28 mag/arcsec$^2$.

We present the concept of a new Fabry-Perot instrument called BTFI-2, whichis based on the design of another Brazilian instrument for the SOAR Telescope,the Brazilian Tunable Filter Imager (BTFI). BTFI-2 is designed to be mounted onthe visitor port of the SOAR Adaptive Module (SAM) facility, on the SOARtelescope, at Cerro Pach\'on, Chile. This optical Fabry-Perot instrument willhave a field of view of 3 x 3 arcmin, with 0.12 arcsec per pixel and spectralresolutions of 4500 and 12000, at H-alpha, dictated by the two ICOS Fabry-Perotdevices available. The instrument will be unique for the study of centers ofnormal, interacting and active galaxies and the intergalactic medium, wheneverspatial resolution over a large area is required. BTFI-2 will combine the bestfeatures of two previous instruments, SAM-FP and BTFI: it will use an ElectronMultiplication detector for low and fast scanning, it will be built with thepossibility of using a new Fabry-Perot etalon which provides a range ofresolutions and it will be light enough to work attached to SAM, and hence theoutput data cubes will be GLAO-corrected.

While we observe a large amount of cold interstellar gas and dust in a subsetof the early-type galaxy (ETG) population, the source of this material remainsunclear. The two main, competing scenarios are external accretion of lowermass, gas-rich dwarfs and internal production from stellar mass loss and/orcooling from the hot interstellar medium (ISM). We test these hypotheses withmeasurements of the stellar and nebular metallicities of three ETGs (NGC 2768,NGC 3245, and NGC 4694) from new long-slit, high signal-to-noise ratiospectroscopy from the Multi-Object Double Spectographs (MODs) on the LargeBinocular Telescope (LBT). These ETGs have modest star formation rates andminimal evidence of nuclear activity. We model the stellar continuum to derivechemical abundances and measure gas-phase abundances with standard nebulardiagnostics. We find that the stellar and gas-phase abundances are verysimilar, which supports internal production and is very inconsistent with theaccretion of smaller, lower metallicity dwarfs. All three of these galaxies arealso consistent with an extrapolation of the mass-metallicity relation tohigher mass galaxies with lower specific star formation rates. The emissionline flux ratios along the long-slit, as well as global line ratios clearlyindicate that photoionization dominates and ionization by alternate sourcesincluding AGN activity, shocks, cosmic rays, dissipative magnetohydrodynamicwaves, and single degenerate Type Ia supernovae progenitors do notsignificantly affect the line ratios.

We present a systematic investigation of the circumgalactic medium (CGM)within projected distances d<160 kpc of luminous red galaxies (LRGs). Thesample comprises 16 intermediate-redshift (z=0.21-0.55) LRGs of stellar massM_star>1e11 M_sun. Combining far-ultraviolet Cosmic Origin Spectrograph spectrafrom the Hubble Space Telescope and optical echelle spectra from the groundenables a detailed ionization analysis based on resolved component structuresof a suite of absorption transitions, including the full HI Lyman series andvarious ionic metal transitions. By comparing the relative abundances ofdifferent ions in individually-matched components, we show that cool gas (T~1e4K) density and metallicity can vary by more than a factor of ten in a singlehalo. Specifically, metal-poor absorbing components with <1/10 solarmetallicity are seen in 50% of the LRG halos, while gas with solar andsuper-solar metallicity is also common. These results indicate a complexmultiphase structure and poor chemical mixing in these quiescent halos. Wecalculate the total surface mass density of cool gas, \Sigma_cool, by applyingthe estimated ionization fraction corrections to the observed HI columndensities. The radial profile of \Sigma_cool is best-described by a projectedEinasto profile of slope \alpha=1 and scale radius r_s=48 kpc. We find thattypical LRGs at z~0.4 contain cool gas mass of M_cool= (1-2) x1e10 M_sun atd<160 kpc (or as much as 4x1e10 M_sun at d<500 kpc), comparable to the cool CGMmass of star-forming galaxies. Furthermore, we show that high-ionization OVIand low-ionization absorption species exhibit distinct velocity profiles,highlighting their different physical origins. We discuss the implications ofour findings for the origin and fate of cool gas in LRG halos.