Related papers: Open clusters and the galactic disk
Nuclear Stellar Disks (NSDs), of a few tens to hundreds of parsec across, are a common and yet poorly studied feature of early-type galaxies. Still, such small disks represent a powerful tool to constrain the assembling history of galaxies,…
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) has recently been found to harbour more than two hundred per cent increase of its known cluster population. We provide here with solid evidence that such an unprecedented number of clusters could be largely…
In the first part of this article, we review observations of the mass and luminosity functions of young and old star cluster systems. We also review some of the physical processes that may determine the characteristic mass of globular…
The main goal of our project is to obtain a complete picture of individual open clusters from homogeneous data and then search for correlations between their astrophysical parameters. The near-infrared JHKS photometric data from the…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
We simulate the assembly of a massive rich cluster and the formation of its constituent galaxies in a flat, low-density universe. Our most accurate model follows the collapse, the star-formation history and the orbital motion of all…
In hierarchical galaxy formation the stellar halos of galaxies are formed by the accretion of minor satellites and therefore contain valuable information about the (early) assembly process of galaxies. Our GHOSTS survey measures the stellar…
Cold inactive disks are believed to exist in Low Luminosity AGN (LLAGN). They may also exist in the nuclei of inactive galaxies and in the center of our own Galaxy. These disks would then be embedded in the observed dense nuclear stellar…
A systematic search of the 2MASS point source catalog, covering 47% of the sky, was carried out aiming to reveal any hidden globular clusters in our Galaxy. Eight new star clusters were discovered by a search algorithm based on finding…
We describe the structural and kinematic properties of the first compact stellar systems discovered by the AIMSS project. These spectroscopically confirmed objects have sizes ($\sim$6 $<$ R$_{\rm e}$ [pc] $<$ 500) and masses…
In the last decade we have come to realize that the traditional classification of stellar clusters into open and globular clusters cannot be easily extended beyond the realm of the Milky Way, and that even for our Galaxy it is not fully…
An inspection of the DSS and 2MASS images of selected Milky Way regions has led to the discovery of 66 stellar groupings whose morphologies, color-magnitude diagrams, and stellar density distributions suggest that these objects are possible…
Young open clusters are our laboratories for studying high-mass star formation and evolution. Unfortunately, the information that they provide is difficult to interpret, and sometimes contradictory. In this contribution, I present a few…
We present clear and direct evidence of the pre-processing effect of group galaxies falling into clusters in the local Universe ($z \lesssim 0.1$). We start with a sample of 238 clusters, from which we select 153 with N$_{200} \ge$ 20. We…
We study the population of galactic disks expected in current hierarchical clustering models for structure formation. A rotationally supported disk with exponential surface density profile is assumed to form with a mass and angular momentum…
Clusters of galaxies are self-gravitating systems of mass ~10^14-10^15 Msun. They consist of dark matter (~80 %), hot diffuse intracluster plasma (< 20 %) and a small fraction of stars, dust, and cold gas, mostly locked in galaxies. In most…
We review the properties of globular clusters which make them useful for studying the Galactic halo, Galactic chemical evolution, and the early stages of the formation of the Milky Way. We review the evidence that GCs have a chemical…
An update of the set of low surface brightness galaxies is presented which can be used to set constraints on the otherwise ambiguous decompositions of their rotation curves into contributions due to the various components of the galaxies.…
The clustered nature of star formation should produce a high degree of structure in the combined phase and chemical space in the Galactic disk. To date, observed structure of this kind has been mostly limited to bound clusters and moving…
Rich clusters of galaxies, the largest virialized systems known, provide a powerful tool for the study of cosmology. Some of the fundamental questions that can be addressed with clusters of galaxies include: how did galaxies and large-scale…