Related papers: The Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster in Context
Different types of observations, together with consistent and physical modelizations, suggest as realistic the hypothesis of enrichement of galactic nuclei by mean of massive globular clusters orbitally decayed and merged in the inner…
We review our current understanding of nuclear stellar discs (NSDs), rotating, and flattened stellar structures found in the central regions of both early- and late-type galaxies. We examine their demographics, kinematics, stellar…
Recent measurements, of the velocities of stars near the center of the Milky Way have provided the strongest evidence for the presence of a supermassive black hole in a galaxy, but the observational uncertainties poorly constrain many of…
The Milky Way is the only galaxy for which we can resolve individual stars at all evolutionary phases, from the Galactic center to the outskirt. The last decade, thanks to the advent of near IR detectors and 8 meter class telescopes, has…
Star clusters that form in nuclear rings appear to be at slightly larger radii than the gas. We argue that the star clusters move out from the gas in which they are formed because of satellite-disk tidal interactions. In calculating the…
We present new upper limits for black hole masses in extremely late type spiral galaxies. We confirm that this class of galaxies has black holes with masses less than 10^6 Msolar, if any. We also derive new upper limits for nuclear star…
Nuclear star clusters (NSCs) are dense star clusters located at the centre of galaxies spanning a wide range of masses and morphologies. Analysing NSC occupation statistics in different environments provides an invaluable window into…
Galaxy mergers are common processes in the Universe. As a large fraction of galaxies hosts at their centres a central supermassive black hole (SMBH), mergers can lead to the formation of a supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB). The…
We present photometric and morphological analyses of nuclear star clusters (NSCs) -- very dense, massive star clusters present in the central regions of most galaxies -- in a sample of 33 massive disk galaxies within 20 Mpc, part of the…
(Abridged) We report on the structure of the nuclear star cluster in the innermost 0.16 pc of the Galaxy as measured by the number density profile of late-type giants. Using laser guide star adaptive optics in conjunction with the integral…
The inner hundred parsecs of the Milky Way hosts the nearest supermassive black hole, largest reservoir of dense gas, greatest stellar density, hundreds of massive main and post main sequence stars, and the highest volume density of…
Nuclear stellar clusters are a common phenomenon in spirals and in starbursts galaxies, and they may be a natural consequence of the star formation processes in the central regions of galaxies. HST UV imaging of a few Seyfert 2 galaxies…
The Galactic centre hosts a crowded, dense nuclear star cluster with a half-light radius of 4 pc. Most of the stars in the Galactic centre are cool late-type stars, but there are also >100 hot early-type stars in the central parsec of the…
Nuclear star clusters, which fragment into metal-poor stars in situ at the centers of protogalaxies, provide ideal environments for the formation of intermediate-mass black holes with masses $10^3-10^6M_\odot$. We utilize the semianalytic…
In this lecture we investigate the formation and evolution of black holes in star clusters. The star clusters under consideration are generally rich, containing more than 10^4 stars, and with a density exceeding 10^4 stars/pc^3. Among these…
Nucleation is a common phenomenon in all types of galaxies and at least 70% of them host nuclear star clusters (NSCs) in their centres. Many of the NSCs co-habit with super-massive black holes and follow similar scaling relations with host…
This talk is an attempt to combine recent insights into the nature of the nuclear star clusters in galaxies of various morphologies into a coherent (albeit simplistic) picture for their formation, growth, and eventual destruction.
Motivated by recent observations that suggest a low density of old stars around the Milky Way supermassive black hole, models for the nuclear star cluster are considered that have not yet reached a steady state under the influence of…
Nuclear stellar cluster (NSCs) are known to exist around massive black holes (MBHs) in galactic nuclei. They are thought to have formed through in-situ star formation following gas inflow to the nucleus of the galaxy and/or through the…
A massive young star cluster, initially embedded in its parent molecular cloud, will spiral into the Galactic Center from $\lta 30m_6^{1/2}\pc$ during the life-time of its most massive stars, if the combined total mass is $\sim…