Related papers: The Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster
Star formation is a fundamental process for galactic evolution. One issue over the last several decades has been determining whether star formation is induced by external triggers or is self-regulated in a closed system. The role of an…
Close encounters and physical collisions between stars in young dense clusters may lead to the formation of very massive stars and black holes via runaway merging. We examine critically some details of this process, using N-body simulations…
Mergers between stellar-mass black holes will be key sources of gravitational radiation for ground-based detectors. However, the rates of these events are highly uncertain, given that such systems are invisible. One formation scenario…
We study galaxies that host both nuclear star clusters and active galactic nuclei (AGN) implying the presence of a massive black hole. We select a sample of 176 galaxies with previously detected nuclear star clusters that range from…
We perform $N$-body simulations of star clusters in time-dependant galactic potentials. Since the Milky Way was built-up through mergers with dwarf galaxies, its globular cluster population is made up of clusters formed both during the…
The centre of the Milky Way is occupied by a nuclear star cluster, which contains the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The cluster is embedded in the larger surrounding nuclear stellar disc. These three components dominate the mass budget of…
Centers of galaxies host both a supermassive black hole and a dense stellar cluster. Such an environment should lead to stellar collisions, possibly at very high velocities so that the total energy involved is of the same order as…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…
Globular clusters are large and dense agglomerate of stars. At variance with smaller clusters of stars, they exhibit signs of some chemical evolution. At least for this reason, they are intermediate between open clusters and massive objects…
We explore the origin of a population of stars recently detected in the inner parsec of the Milky Way Nuclear Cluster (NC), which exhibit sub-solar metallicity and a higher rotation compared to the dominant population. Using…
The history of star formation in the strong gravitational potential of the Galactic center has been of much interest, recently. We propose that the sub-parsec-scale disk of massive stars orbiting the massive black hole at the Galactic…
The study of the internal structure of star clusters provides important clues concerning their formation mechanism and dynamical evolution. There are both observational and numerical evidences indicating that open clusters evolve from an…
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…
This is a pedagogical review of recent results on the interactions of central massive black holes with stars very near them, focused on the black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Table of contents: [1] Introduction [2] Stellar dynamics…
The cosmic history of star formation is briefly reviewed, starting with the Milky Way and then discussing observations relevant to the closed box and hierarchical build-up models. Observations of local star formation are reviewed for…
Recent high-resolution observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) reveal that young star clusters of extraordinary luminosity and compactness ("super star clusters") are commonly found in starburst systems. Cluster formation appears…
Near infrared images from the COBE satellite presented the first clear evidence that our Milky Way galaxy contains a boxy shaped bulge. Recent years have witnessed a gradual paradigm shift in the formation and evolution of the Galactic…
The halo of the Milky Way provides a laboratory to study the properties of the shocked hot gas that is predicted by models of galaxy formation. There is observational evidence of energy injection into the halo from past activity in the…
The Milky Way's nuclear stellar disc (NSD) and nuclear star cluster (NSC) are the main features of the Galactic centre. Nevertheless, their observation is hampered by the extreme source crowding and high extinction. Hence, their relation…
Recent investigations of the double red clump in the color-magnitude diagram of the Milky Way bulge cast serious doubts on the structure and formation origin of the outer bulge. Unlike previous interpretation based on an X-shaped bulge,…