Related papers: Nuclear Star Clusters across the Hubble Sequence
Most if not all stars form in star clusters. Thus the distribution of star clusters preserves the information on the star formation history of a galaxy. Massive clusters form only during episodes of high star formation activity whereas…
Nuclear star clusters (NSCs) are dense stellar environments located in the center of most galaxies. NSCs are thought to form through two primary methods; through the inspiral of globular clusters (GCs) to the galactic center due to…
Massive black holes are key inhabitants of the nuclei of galaxies. Moreover, their astrophysical relevance has gained significant traction in recent years, thanks especially to the amazing results that are being (or will be) delivered by…
Globular clusters are large and dense agglomerate of stars. At variance with smaller clusters of stars, they exhibit signs of some chemical evolution. At least for this reason, they are intermediate between open clusters and massive objects…
The center of our galaxy is home to a massive black hole, SgrA*, and a nuclear star cluster containing stellar populations of various ages. While the late type stars may be too old to have retained memory of their initial orbital…
Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet (UV) images of nine starburst galaxies reveal them to be highly irregular, even after excluding compact sources (clusters and resolved stars). Most (7/9) are found to have a similar intrinsic effective…
Stellar clusters are born in cold and dusty molecular clouds and the youngest clusters are embedded to various degrees in dusty dark molecular material. Such embedded clusters can be considered protocluster systems. The most deeply buried…
Most star complexes are in fact complexes of stars, clusters and gas clouds; term "star complexes" was introduced as general one disregarding the preferential content of a complex. Generally the high rate of star formation in a complex is…
Nearly a century after the true nature of galaxies as distant "island universes" was established, their origin and evolution remain great unsolved problems of modern astrophysics. One of the most promising ways to investigate galaxy…
Nuclear star clusters (NSCs) are massive star clusters found in the innermost region of most galaxies. While recent studies suggest that low-mass NSCs in dwarf galaxies form largely out of the merger of globular clusters and NSCs in massive…
Star clusters with a high central density contain an ecological network of evolving binaries, affected by interactions with passing stars, while in turn affecting the energy budget of the cluster as a whole by giving off binding energy.…
Massive star formation in the central regions of spiral galaxies plays an important role in the dynamical and secular evolution of their hosts. Here, we summarise a number of recent investigations of the star formation history and the…
We present scaling relations between structural properties of nuclear star clusters and their host galaxies for a sample of early-type dwarf galaxies observed as part of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)…
In a virialized stellar system, the mean-square velocity is a direct tracer of the energy per unit mass of the system. Here, we exploit this to estimate and compare root-mean-square velocities for a large sample of nuclear star clusters and…
Nucleation is a common phenomenon in all types of galaxies and at least 70% of them host nuclear star clusters (NSCs) in their centres. Many of the NSCs co-habit with super-massive black holes and follow similar scaling relations with host…
I review recent observational progress concerning the evolution of the morphological distribution of galaxies in the rich cluster environment and in the faint field population. By coupling HST imagery with ground-based spectroscopic…
Galactic nuclei, like the one of the Milky Way, are extreme places with high stellar densities and, in most cases, hosting a supermassive black hole. One of the scenarios proposed for the formation of the Galactic nucleus is by merging of…
If the stellar population of the bulge contains black holes formed in the final core collapse of ordinary stars with M \ga 30 M_{\odot}, then about 25,000 stellar mass black holes should have migrated by dynamical friction into the central…
Ultra compact dwarf galaxies (UCDs) have similar properties as massive globular clusters or the nuclei of nucleated galaxies. Recent observations suggesting a high dark matter content and a steep spatial distribution within groups and…
Single stars in ancient globular clusters (GCs) are believed incapable of producing planetary nebulae (PNe), because their post-asymptotic-giant-branch evolutionary timescales are slower than the dissipation timescales for PNe.…