Related papers: Massive stars, globular clusters and elliptical ga…
A brief overview of the properties of massive star clusters in early-type galaxies is given. All ellipticals (with only one known exception) host massive star clusters in the form of globular clusters, suggesting that their formation is…
Almost several decades after the discovery of the first multiple populations in galactic globular clusters (GC) the debate on their formation is still extremely current and NGC2808 remains one of the best benchmark to test any scenario for…
We propose the Wind of Fast Rotating Massive Stars scenario to explain the origin of the abundance anomalies observed in globular clusters. We compute and present models of fast rotating stars with initial masses between 20 and 120 Msun for…
We discuss a possible physical connection between helium-rich (Y > 0.35) stellar populations of massive globular clusters (GCs) and the ultraviolet (UV) upturn of galactic spheroids by using analytical and numerical models. In our model,…
Globular clusters contain many stars with surface abundance patterns indicating contributions from hydrogen burning products, as seen in the anti-correlated elemental abundances of e.g. sodium and oxygen, and magnesium and aluminium.…
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…
Globular clusters (GCs) are thought to be ancient relics from the early formative phase of galaxies, although their physical origin remains uncertain. GCs are most numerous around massive elliptical galaxies, where they can exhibit a broad…
It is suspected that the ultraviolet (UV) upturn phenomenon in elliptical galaxies and extended horizontal-branch stars in globular clusters have a common origin. An extremely high abundance of helium (Y~0.4) allows for a working…
Recent observations and modeling of globular clusters with multiple populations strongly indicate the presence of super helium-rich subpopulations in old stellar systems. Motivated by this, we have constructed new population synthesis…
A significant fraction of stars in globular clusters (about 70%-85%) exhibit peculiar chemical patterns with strong abundance variations in light elements along with constant abundances in heavy elements. These abundance anomalies can be…
The majority of the inhomogeneities in the chemical composition of Globular Cluster (GC) stars appear due to primordial enrichment by hot-CNO cycled material processed in stars belonging to a first stellar generation. Either massive AGB…
Collisions and mergers of gas-rich galaxies trigger bursts of star and cluster formation. Of the thousands of clusters typically formed during a major merger, only the most massive and compact survive for Gigayears as globular clusters…
We consider the hypothesis that the formation of elliptical galaxies includes a phase in which star formation is mostly restricted to massive stars, with the bias towards high mass stars increasing with elliptical galaxy mass. The mass…
This review focuses on how galaxies and their globular cluster systems form. I first discuss the now fairly convincing evidence that some globular clusters form in galaxy starbursts/mergers. One way these observations are valuable is they…
I discuss a scenario in which the ultraviolet (UV) upturn of giant early-type galaxies (ETGs) is primarily due to helium-rich stellar populations that formed in massive metal-rich globular clusters (GCs) which subsequently dissolved in the…
We present models of the late stages of stellar evolution intended to explain the UV upturn phenomenon in elliptical galaxies. Such models are sensitive to values of a number of poorly-constrained physical parameters, including metallicity,…
From an analysis of almost 2000 GALEX images of galaxies with morphological types ranging from E to Sab, we have found a significant subset (28%) that show UV emission outside $R_{25}$. We have obtained H$\alpha$ imaging of ten such…
We propose that the abundance anomalies of proton-capture elements in globular clusters, such as the C-N, Na-O, Mg-Al and Na-F anti-correlations, were produced by super-massive stars with M ~ 10,000 Msun. Such stars could form in the…
The most massive galaxies in the present-day Universe are found to lie in the centres of rich clusters. They have old, coeval stellar populations suggesting that the bulk of their stars must have formed at early epochs in spectacular…
Whether or not metal-rich HB stars are the dominant UV source in giant elliptical galaxies (gEs) is an important question in current astronomical research. We follow up our previous evolutionary population synthesis study with quantitative…