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Massive star clusters are often used as tracers of galaxy formation and assembly. In order to do so, we must understand their properties at formation, and how those properties change with time, galactic environment, and galaxy assembly…
Most globular clusters have half-mass radii of a few pc with no apparent correlation with their masses. This is different from elliptical galaxies, for which the Faber-Jackson relation suggests a strong positive correlation between mass and…
Sizeable number of stellar-mass black holes (BHs) in globular clusters (GCs) can strongly influence the dynamical evolution and observational properties of their host cluster. Using results from a large set of numerical simulations, we…
The rotation rate, level of magnetic activity and surface lithium abundance are age-dependent quantities in stars of about a solar mass and below. The physical reasons for the evolution of these phenomena are qualitatively understood, but…
We highlight the importance of eclipsing double-line binaries in our understanding on star formation and evolution. We review the recent discoveries of low-mass and sub-stellar eclipsing binaries belonging to star-forming regions, open…
We discuss, from a statistical point of view, some leading issues that deal with the study of stellar populations in fully or partially unresolved aggregates, like globular clusters and distant galaxies. A confident assessment of the…
Over the last few decades, observational surveys have revealed that high-order multiple-star systems (e.g. triples, quadruples, etc.), and triples in particular, are common in our Galaxy. In this paper, we consider the dynamical…
Most stars are born in the crowded environments of gradually forming star clusters. Dynamical interactions between close-passing stars and the evolving UV radiation fields from proximate massive stars are expected to sculpt the…
Stellar masses are a fundamental property to understand models of pre-main sequence evolution, but their values derived from Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagrams are strongly model dependent. We benchmark pre-main sequence stellar evolutionary…
This paper investigates the dynamical evolution of embedded stellar clusters from the protocluster stage, through the embedded star-forming phase, and out to ages of 10 Myr -- after the gas has been removed from the cluster. The relevant…
Surface temperature distribution of horizontal-branch (HB) stars is very sensitive to age in old stellar systems, which makes it an attractive age indicator. In this paper, we present the recent revision of our model calculations for the HB…
We review progress in numerical simulations of star cluster formation. These simulations involve the bottom-up assembly of clusters through hierarchical mergers, which produces a fractal stellar distribution at young (~0.5 Myr) ages. The…
More than 50 years have elapsed since the first studies of star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. The wealth of data accumulated since then has not only revealed a large cluster system, but also a diversified one, filling loci in the age,…
The past few years have seen dramatic improvements in the scope and realism of star cluster simulations. Accurate treatments of stellar evolution, coupled with robust descriptions of all phases of binary evolution, have been incorporated…
We present dynamical distance estimates for 15 Galactic globular clusters and use these to check the consistency of dynamical and photometric distance estimates. For most of the clusters, this is the first dynamical distance estimate ever…
(ABBREVIATED:) The large majority of extragalactic star cluster studies done to date have essentially used two or three-passband aperture photometry, combined with theoretical stellar population synthesis models, to obtain age, mass and…
Open clusters, which have age, abundance, and extinction information from studies of main-sequence turn off stars, are the ideal location in which to determine the mass-luminosity-radius relation for low-mass stars. We have undertaken a…
Stellar fundamental properties (masses, radii, effective temperatures) can be extracted from observations of eclipsing binary systems with remarkable precision, often better than 2%. Such precise measurements afford us the opportunity to…
We recently introduced three new parameters that describe the shape of the normalized cumulative radial distribution (nCRD) of the innermost stars in globular clusters and trace the clusters dynamical evolution. Here we extend our previous…
At least 10-15% of nearby sun-like stars have known Jupiter-mass planets. In contrast, very few planets are found in mature open and globular clusters such as the Hyades and 47 Tuc. We explore here the possibility that this dichotomy is due…