Related papers: Open cluster stability and the effects of binary s…
Around the turn of the last century, star clusters of all kinds were considered "simple" stellar populations. Over the past decade, this situation has changed dramatically. At the same time, star clusters are among the brightest stellar…
Much of our knowledge of galaxies comes from analysing the radiation emitted by their stars. It depends on the stellar initial mass function (IMF) describing the distribution of stellar masses when the population formed. Consequently…
I review efforts to determine the form and any lower limit to the initial mass function in the Galactic disk, using observations of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in the field, young clusters and star forming regions. I focus on the…
Binary stars are common in star clusters and galaxies, but the detailed effects of binary evolution are not taken into account in some colour-magnitude diagram (CMD) studies. This paper studies the CMDs of twelve globular clusters via…
To study the evolution of binary star clusters we have imaged 7 systems in the Small Magellanic Cloud with SOAR 4-m telescope using B and V filters. The sample contains pairs with well-separated components (d < 30 pc) as well as systems…
Being the most massive known young stellar cluster in the Milky Way, Westerlund 1 (Wd1) constitutes an ideal benchmark for understanding the evolution of massive stars. However, the cluster age remains highly controversial (~4-10 Myr),…
Stellar clusters are regularly used to study the evolution of their host galaxy. Except for a few nearby galaxies, these studies rely on the interpretation of integrated cluster properties, especially integrated photometry observed using…
Recent evidence based independently on spectral line strengths and dynamical modelling point towards a non-universal stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF), probably implying an excess of low-mass stars in elliptical galaxies with a high…
We derive photometric, structural and dynamical evolution-related parameters of 11 nearby open clusters with ages in the range 70 Myr to 7 Gyr and masses in the range $\approx400$ \ms to $\approx5 300$ \ms. We search for relations of…
The formation, properties, and evolution of massive stars remain subject to considerable uncertainty; impacting on fields as diverse as galactic feedback and the nature of the progenitors of both electromagnetic and gravitational wave…
The binary properties of open clusters place crucial constraints on star formation theory and clusters' dynamical evolution. We develop a comprehensive approach that models the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of the cluster members as the…
We estimate the fraction of stars that form in compact clusters (bound and unbound), Gamma_F, in a diverse sample of eight star-forming galaxies, including two irregulars, two dwarf starbursts, two spirals, and two mergers. The average…
We study the evolution of populations of binary stars within massive cluster-forming regions. We simulate the formation of young massive star clusters within giant molecular clouds with masses ranging from 2 x 10$^{4}$ to 3.2 x 10$^{5}$…
We investigate the most plausible stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) and the main origin of the tilt of the Fundamental Plane (FP) for old, massive early-type galaxies. We consider a sample of 13 bright galaxies of the Coma cluster and…
Using 3.6$\mu$m images of 97 early-type galaxies, we develop and verify methodology to measure globular cluster populations from the S$^4$G survey images. We find that 1) the ratio, T$_{\rm N}$, of the number of clusters, N$_{\rm CL}$, to…
We determine the mass functions (MFs) and the dynamical parameters of 15 nearby open clusters (OCs) using the unprecedented data set of the Gaia Early Data Release 3. We select the members of each cluster by combining the photometric…
The young star clusters we observe today are the building blocks of a new generation of stars and planets in our Galaxy and beyond. Despite their fundamental role we still lack knowledge about the conditions under which star clusters form…
Which sample of objects can give strong constraints on single-star evolution theory ? Whilst star cluster members share the same age and the same metallicity, many questions (e.g. field stars contamination, stellar rotation, presence of…
Many possible scenarios for the formation of multiple stellar populations (MSP) in globular clusters (GCs) have been discussed so far, including the involvement of asymptotic giant branch stars, fast rotating main sequence stars, very…
Open clusters have long been used as tracers of Galactic structure. However, without a selection function to describe the completeness of the cluster census, it is difficult to quantitatively interpret their distribution. We create a method…