Related papers: The lost siblings of the Sun
(Abridged) Using an efficient computational approach, we have reconstructed the structure of the dust cloud in the Solar system between 0.5 and 100 AU produced by the Kuiper belt objects. Our simulations offer a 3-D physical model of the…
Updated data of the 153 Galactic globular clusters are used to readdress fundamental parameters of the Milky Way. We build a reduced sample, decontaminated of the clusters younger than 10Gyr, those with retrograde orbits and/or evidence of…
We perform cosmological hydrodynamics simulations with non-equilibrium primordial chemistry to obtain 59 minihalos that host first stars. The obtained minihalos are used as initial conditions of local three dimensional radiation…
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…
The Quintuplet star cluster is one of only three known young ($<10$ Myr) massive (M $>10^4$ M$_\odot$) clusters within $\sim100$ pc of the Galactic Center. In order to explore star cluster formation and evolution in this extreme…
Intracluster stars are believed to be unbound from their progenitor galaxies and diffused throughout the galaxy cluster, creating intracluster light (ICL). However, when and how these stars form are still in debate. To directly constrain…
Observations of the high energy sky, mainly with the INTEGRAL satellite, have raised new questions about the formation and evolution of High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs). The number of detected HMXBs of different types is now high enough to…
The triple asteroids and triple Kuiper belt objects (collectively called the triple minor planets) in the Solar system are of particular interest to the scientific community since the discovery of the first triple asteroid system in 2004.…
We present a high-resolution simulation of globular cluster formation in a galaxy merger. For the first time in such a simulation, individual star clusters are directly identified and followed on their orbits. We quantitatively compare star…
Understanding the origin of comets requires knowledge of how the Solar System formed from a cloud of dust and gas 4.567 Gyr ago. Here, a review is presented of how the remnants of this formation process, meteorites and to a lesser extent…
Dust emission around the nearby star epsilon Eridani has been imaged using a new submillimetre camera (SCUBA at the JCMT). At 850 microns wavelength a ring of dust is seen, peaking at 60 AU from the star and with much lower emission inside…
Most stars are formed in a cluster or association, where the number density of stars can be high. This means that a large fraction of initially-single stars will undergo close encounters with other stars and/or exchange into binaries. We…
The small bodies in the Kuiper Belt region of the distant Solar System are leftovers from planet formation. Their orbital distribution today tells us about how giant planets migrated, while their surface properties, shapes, and sizes tell…
The six-degree obliquity of the sun suggests that either an asymmetry was present in the solar system's formation environment, or an external torque has misaligned the angular momentum vectors of the sun and the planets. However, the exact…
Observations of dusty debris disks can be used to test theories of planetesimal coagulation. Planetesimals of sizes up to a couple thousand kms are embedded in these disks and their mutual collisions generate the small dust grains that are…
Star formation in starbursts appears to be biased toward compact clusters, with up to 20% of all stars formed in them. Observations with HST show that many of these clusters have luminosities (-9 > Mv > -16), UBVI colors, and half-light…
We conducted a survey of open clusters within 1 kpc from the Sun using the astrometric and photometric data of the Gaia Data Release 2. We found 655 cluster candidates by visual inspection of the stellar distributions in proper motion space…
The question of whether the Sun is peculiar within the class of solar-type stars has been the subject of active investigation over the past three decades. Although several solar twins have been found with stellar parameters similar to those…
Most star complexes are in fact complexes of stars, clusters and gas clouds; term "star complexes" was introduced as general one disregarding the preferential content of a complex. Generally the high rate of star formation in a complex is…
Most stars are born in rich young stellar clusters (YSCs) embedded in giant molecular clouds. The most massive stars live out their short lives there, profoundly influencing their natal environments by ionizing HII regions, inflating…