Related papers: On a new parameter to estimate the helium content …
The multiple stellar populations (MPs) of $\sim$11-13 Gyr-old Globular Clusters (GCs) in our Galaxy are characterized by different content of several light elements. These elements describe well-defined patterns like the C-N and the Na-O…
Context. While most (if not all) Type I Galactic globular clusters (GGCs) are characterised by spreads in the abundances of light chemical elements (e.g. Li, N, O, Na, Mg, Al), it is not yet well established whether similar spreads may…
The majority of the inhomogeneities in the chemical composition of Globular Cluster (GC) stars appear due to primordial enrichment by hot-CNO cycled material processed in stars belonging to a first stellar generation. Either massive AGB…
The tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) provides a key standard candle for extragalactic distance measurements and for refining the Hubble constant. We test its robustness by quantifying how metallicity, $\alpha$-element enhancement, age,…
Data from future high-precision Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements will be sensitive to the primordial Helium abundance $Y_p$. At the same time, this parameter can be predicted from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) as a function…
We explore recent estimations of the Hubble parameter $H$ depending on redshift $z$, which include 31 $H(z)$ data points measured from differential ages of galaxies and 26 data points, obtained with other methods. We describe these data…
Evolved cool stars have three distinct evolutionary status: shell Hydrogen-burning (RGB), core Helium and shell Hydrogen burning (RC), and double shell burning (AGB). Asteroseismology can distinguish between the RC and the other status, but…
We describe a new method for robustly testing theoretical predictions of red giant evolution near the tip of the giant branch. When theoretical cumulative luminosity functions are shifted to align the tip in I-band and normalized at a…
The huge photometric databases that are being created for stars in the Magellanic Clouds and in Local Group galaxies not only allow detailed study of the star formation history of these systems, but also provide important information on…
Ages have been derived for 55 globular clusters (GCs) from overlays of isochrones onto the turnoff photometry, assuming distances based on fits of zero-age horizontal branch (ZAHB) models to the lower bound of the observed distributions of…
Lithium is one of the few elements produced during the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in the early universe. Moreover, its fragility makes it useful as a proxy for stellar environmental conditions. As such, the lithium abundance in old systems is…
Recent results by Bensby and collaborators on the ages of microlensed stars in the Galactic bulge have challenged the picture of an exclusively old stellar population. However, these age estimates have not been independently confirmed. In…
We have developed an homogeneous evolutionary scenario for H- and He-burning low-mass stars by computing updated stellar models for a wide metallicity and age range (0.0002$\le Z \le$0.004 and 9$\le t(Gyr) \le$15, respectively) suitable to…
Using the HST Wide Field Camera of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), we have obtained deep (V,I) photometry of an outer-halo field in NGC 5128, to a limiting magnitude of I~29. Our photometry directly reveals the core helium-burning…
We investigated the theoretical possibility of accurately determining the helium-to-metal enrichment ratio $\Delta Y/\Delta Z$ from precise observations of double lined eclipsing binary systems. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we drew…
We present high quality near infrared Color Magnitude Diagrams of 10 Galactic Globular Clusters (GCs) spanning a wide metallicity range (-2.15<[Fe/H]<-0.2). This homogeneous data-base has been used to perform a detailed analysis of the Red…
Context: Asteroseismology, a powerful approach for obtaining internal structure and stellar properties, requires surface temperature and chemical composition information to determine mass and age. High-resolution spectroscopy is a valuable…
The effective temperature (Teff) distribution of stellar evolution models along the red giant branch (RGB) is sensitive to a number of parameters including the overall metallicity, elemental abundance patterns, the efficiency of convection,…
The near-infrared behavior of the red giant branch (RGB hereafter) as a function of abundance is examined with an unprecedented large sample of 27 Galactic globular clusters with Two Micron All Sky Survey photometry. We propose a new…
Lithium and zirconium abundances (the latter taken as representative for s-process enrichment) are determined for a large sample of massive Galactic O-rich AGB stars, for which high resolution optical spectroscopy has been obtained…