Related papers: The second and third parameters of the Horizontal …
The Second Parameter (2ndP) Problem recognizes the remarkable role played by horizontal branch (HB) morphology in the development of our understanding of globular clusters, and the Galaxy, over the last 50 years. I will describe the…
Blue horizontal branch and UV bright stars in several globular clusters are analysed spectroscopically and the results are compared with predictions of stellar evolutionary theory. We find that the distribution of temperatures and surface…
There is compelling observational evidence that globular clusters (GCs) are quite complex objects. A growing body of photometric results indicate that the evolutionary sequences are not simply isochrones in the observational plane -as…
Disentangling distinct stellar populations along the red-giant branches (RGBs) of Globular Clusters (GCs) is possible by using the pseudo two-color diagram dubbed chromosome map (ChM). One of the most intriguing findings is that the…
Black holes (BHs) play a major role in the structural and dynamical evolutions of Globular Clusters (GCs). Several recent works searched for BHs in Galactic GCs using scaling relations derived from numerical simulations. However, the…
We present a new set of horizontal-branch (HB) models computed with the MESA stellar evolution code. The models adopt $\alpha$-enhanced \cite{ags09} metals mixtures and include the gravitational settling of He. They are used in our HB…
We review HB stars in a broad astrophysical context, including both variable and non-variable stars. A reassessment of the Oosterhoff dichotomy is presented, which provides unprecedented detail regarding its origin and systematics. We show…
To address the puzzling photometric properties of horizontal branch stars in Galactic GCs, several different groups have undertaken detailed spectroscopic analyses of individual blue HB stars. Hotter BHB stars show strong metal enhancement…
We present deep (V ~ 28.0) BV photometry obtained with the wide field channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board HST for four M31 globular clusters that were identified as candidate intermediate-age (age ~ 1-9 Gyr) by various…
A major source of uncertainty in the age determination of old ($\sim10$ Gyr) integrated stellar populations is the presence of hot horizontal branch (HB) stars. Here, we describe a simple approach to tackle this problem, and show the…
By adopting the empirical constraints related to the estimates of Helium enhancement ($\Delta Y$), present mass ratio between first and second stellar generations ($M_{1G}/M_{2G}$) and the actual mass of Galactic globular clusters…
The physical parameters of the stars in the central region of the globular cluster M5 (NGC 5904) were determined from UBV photometry using Kurucz (1992) synthetic flux distributions and some empirical relations. It is found that the bluest…
The spectroscopic and photometric signals of the star-to-star abundance variations found in globular clusters seem to be correlated with global parameters like the cluster's metallicity, mass and age. Understanding this behaviour could…
The treatment of convective boundaries during core helium burning is a fundamental problem in stellar evolution calculations. In Paper~I we showed that new asteroseismic observations of these stars imply they have either very large…
A major uncertainty in the spectroscopic dating of extragalactic globular clusters concerns the degenerate effect that age and horizontal branch morphology have on the strength of Balmer lines. In this Letter we show that the ratio between…
Six decades and counting, the formation of hot ~20,000-30,000 K Extreme Horizontal Branch (EHB) stars in Galactic Globular Clusters remains one of the most elusive quests in stellar evolutionary theory. Here we report on two discoveries…
The presence of extreme horizontal branch (EHB) and blue hook stars in some Galactic globular clusters (GGCs) constitutes one of the remaining mysteries of stellar evolution. In this paper, we focus on $\omega$ Cen, a peculiar, massive GGC…
The globular cluster M79 was observed with the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT) during the Astro-1 space shuttle mission in 1990 December. The cluster's far-UV integrated spectrum shows strong absorption in the Lyman lines of atomic…
We use abundances of Ca, O, Na, Al from high resolution UVES spectra of 200 red giants in 17 globular clusters (GCs) to investigate the correlation found by Lee et al. (2009) between chemical enrichment from SN II and star-to-star…
By adopting empirical estimates of the Helium enhancement (Delta Y) between consecutive stellar generations for a sample of Galactic globular clusters (GGC), we uniquely constraint the star formation efficiency of each stellar generation in…