Related papers: Blue Hook Stars in Globular Clusters
Blue straggler stars (BSSs) are the most massive stars in a cluster formed via binary or higher-order stellar interactions. Though the exact nature of such formation scenarios is difficult to pin down, we provide observational constraints…
Globular clusters are known to host peculiar objects, named Blue Straggler Stars (BSSs), significantly heavier than the normal stellar population. While these stars can be easily identified during their core hydrogen-burning phase, they are…
As self-gravitating systems, dense star clusters exhibit a natural diffusion of energy from their innermost to outermost regions, which leads to a slow and steady contraction of the core until it ultimately collapses under gravity. However,…
We present new UV (F218W) data for stars in the central region of the Galactic globular cluster NGC2808, collected with the WFPC2 camera on board of the Hubble Space Telescope. These data together with F439W and F555W-band data and previous…
In Martell & Grebel (2010) we reported the discovery in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II/SEGUE spectroscopic database of a small subset of halo red giants, 2.5%, with CN and CH band strengths indicative of globular-cluster-like carbon and…
The morphology of the Horizontal Branch (HB) in Globular Clusters (GC) is among the early evidences that they contain multiple populations of stars. Indeed, the location of each star along the HB depends both on its initial helium content…
The recently-discovered lack of close binaries, among extreme horizontal branch (EHB) stars in Galactic globular clusters, has thus far constituted a major puzzle, in view of the fact that blue subdwarf stars - the field counterparts of…
Recent progress in studies of globular clusters has shown that they are not simple stellar populations, being rather made of multiple generations. Evidence stems both from photometry and spectroscopy. A new paradigm is then arising for the…
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 use Cycle 21 Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations and HST archival ACS Treasury observations of 30 Galactic Globular Clusters to characterize two distinct stellar populations. A sophisticated Bayesian technique is employed to…
BV CCD photometry of the central (1.5 arcmin x 2.0 arcmin) part of the mildly concentrated outer-halo globular cluster NGC 6229 is presented. The data reduction in such a crowded field was based on a wavelet transform analysis. Our larger…
We present evidence for the contribution of high-mass globular clusters to the stellar halo of the Galaxy. Using SDSS-II/SEGUE spectra of over 1900 G- and K-type halo giants, we identify for the first time a subset of stars with CN…
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…
It has recently been suggested that the presence of multiple populations showing various amounts of helium enhancement is the rule, rather than the exception, among globular star clusters. An important prediction of this helium enhancement…
Although Blue Horizontal Branch (BHB) stars are commonly used to trace halo substructure, the stars bluer than (g-r)<-0.3 are ignored due to the difficulty in determining their absolute magnitudes. The blue extention of the horizontal…
The central regions of six Galactic Globular Clusters (GGCs) (M3, M80, M10, M13, M92 and NGC 288) have been imaged using HST-WFPC2 and the ultraviolet (UV) filters (F255W, F336W). The selected sample covers a large range in both central…
We present color-magnitude diagrams (CMD) of the globular cluster NGC 6388 based on HST multiband photometry (F255W, F336W, F439W, F555W). In this paper we focus our attention on the peculiar horizontal branch of this cluster. After a…
The Gould Belt (GB) is a system of gas and young, bright stars distributed along a plane that is inclined with respect to the main plane of the Milky Way. Observational evidence suggests that the GB is our closest star formation complex,…
We estimate the rate of gravitational microlensing events of cluster stars due to black holes (BHs) in the globular cluster NGC 5139 ($\omega Cen$). Theory and observations both indicate that $\omega Cen$ may contain thousands of BHs, but…
Recent interpretation of the color$-$magnitude diagrams of the Milky Way (MW) bulge has suggested that the observed double red-clump feature can be a natural consequence of He-enhanced stellar populations in the MW bulge. This implies that…