Related papers: Westerlund 1 and its Galactic siblings -Observatio…
The goal of this study is to determine a distance to Westerlund 1 independent of the characteristics of the stellar population and to study its neutral environment, using observations of atomic hydrogen. The HI observations are taken from…
Some of the most massive globular clusters of our Milky Way, such as for example omega-Centauri, show a mixture of stellar populations spanning a few Gyr in age and 1.5 dex in metallicities. In contrast, standard formation scenarios predict…
In this paper we report the identification of two new Galactic O2 If*/WN6 stars (WR20aa and WR20c), in the outskirt of the massive young stellar cluster Westerlund 2. The morphological similarity between the near-infrared spectra of the new…
The interplay between the formation of stars, stellar feedback and cloud properties strongly influences the star formation history of giant molecular clouds. The formation of massive stars leads to a variety of stellar clusters, ranging…
We present fundamental parameters of 4 massive eclipsing binaries in the young massive cluster Westerlund 1. The goal is to measure accurate masses and radii of their component stars, which provide much needed constraints for evolutionary…
This paper gathers, from the literature and private communication, 72 new Galactic Population I Wolf-Rayet stars and 17 candidate WCLd stars, recognized and/or discovered after the publication of The VIIth Catalogue of Galactic Wolf-Rayet…
Recent high-resolution observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) reveal that star clusters of extraordinary luminosity and compactness are commonly found in a variety of starburst systems. There has been much speculation that these…
Most stars do not form in isolation but as part of a cluster comprising anywhere between a few dozen to several million stars with stellar densities ranging from 0.01 to several 10$^5$ \Msun pc$^{-3}$. The majority of these clusters…
Recent HST/ACS images of M82 covering the entire galaxy have been used to detect star clusters. The galaxy is known to contain a young population (age < 10 Myr) in its starburst nucleus, surrounded by a post-starburst disk of age < 1 Gyr.…
Recent JWST observations towards Westerlund 1 revealed extensive nebular emission associated with the cluster. Given the age of the region and proximity of that material to massive stars it cannot be primordial star forming gas and the…
We present an updated catalog of 1300 objects in the field of M31, including 670 likely star clusters of various types. Archival images were inspected to confirm cluster classifications where possible, but most of the classifications were…
The Arches is one of the youngest, densest and most massive clusters in the Galaxy. As such it provides a unique insight into the lifecycle of the most massive stars known and the formation and survival of such stellar aggregates in the…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
We have performed a deep multi-band photometric analysis of the star cluster population of Haro 11. This starburst galaxy (log L_FUV = 10.3 L_sun) is considered a nearby analogue of Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at high redshift. The study of…
Young massive clusters are dense aggregates of young stars that form the fundamental building blocks of galaxies. Several examples exist in the Milky Way Galaxy and the Local Group, but they are particularly abundant in starburst and…
Westerlund 1 (Wd1) is potentially the largest star cluster in the Galaxy. That designation critically depends upon the distance to the cluster, yet the cluster is highly obscured, making luminosity-based distance estimates difficult. Using…
We present the diffuse X-ray emission identified in Chandra observations of the young, massive Galactic star cluster Westerlund 1. After removing point-like X-ray sources down to a completeness limit of 2e31 erg/s, we identify 3e34 erg/s…
Using high-resolution, multiple-passband Hubble Space Telescope images spanning the entire optical/near-infrared wavelength range, we obtained a statistically complete sample, $U$-band selected sample of 846 extended star clusters across…
The sample of known star clusters, the fundamental building blocks of galaxies, in the Milky Way is still extremely incomplete for objects beyond a distance of 1-2kpc. Many of the more distant and young clusters are compact and hidden…
How Very Young Massive star Clusters (VYMCs; also known as "starburst" clusters), which typically are of $\gtrsim 10^4M_\odot$ and are a few Myr old, form out of Giant Molecular Clouds is still largely an open question. Increasingly…