Related papers: Dynamical age differences among coeval star cluste…
Young, massive star clusters are the most notable and significant end products of violent star-forming episodes triggered by galaxy collisions, mergers, and close encounters. The question remains, however, whether or not at least a fraction…
This review discusses (i) dynamical methods for determining the masses of Galactic and extragalactic star clusters, (ii) dynamical processes and their time-scales for the evolution of clusters, including evaporation, mass segregation, core…
Galactic globular clusters, which are ancient building blocks of our Galaxy, represent a very interesting family of stellar systems in which some fundamental dynamical processes have taken place on time scales shorter than the age of the…
This chapter presents an overview of the main observational results obtained to date about Blue Straggler Stars (BSSs) in Galactic Globular Clusters (GCs). The BSS specific frequency, radial distribution, chemical composition and rotational…
Blue straggler stars are unique main-sequence stars that appear more luminous, hotter, and therefore younger, than their coeval counterparts. In star clusters, these stars are located above the cluster turn-off in the Hertzsprung-Russell…
Blue stragglers are natural phenomena in star clusters. They originate through mass transfer in isolated binaries, as well as through encounters between two or more stars, in a complex interplay between stellar dynamics and stellar…
Stars in globular clusters are generally believed to have all formed at the same time, early in the Galaxy's history. 'Blue stragglers' are stars massive enough that they should have evolved into white dwarfs long ago. Two possible…
Age is one of the most fundamental parameters of stars, yet it is one of the hardest to determine as it requires modelling various aspects of stellar formation and evolution. When we compare the ages derived from isochronal and dynamical…
Globular clusters (GCs) constitute a system which is evolving because of various interactions with the galactic environment. Evolution may be the explanation of many observed features of Globular Cluster Systems (GCSs); the different radial…
We investigate the long-term dynamical evolution of two distinct stellar populations of low-mass stars in globular clusters in order to study whether the energy equipartition process can explain the high number of stars harbouring abundance…
More than 50 years have elapsed since the first studies of star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. The wealth of data accumulated since then has not only revealed a large cluster system, but also a diversified one, filling loci in the age,…
We investigate the properties and evolution of star particles in two simulations of isolated spiral galaxies, and two galaxies from cosmological simulations. Unlike previous numerical work, where typically each star particle represents one…
In about 40% of the Local Group galaxies star clusters have been detected so far, but the census is still incomplete. The properties of these clusters are briefly reviewed, and the impact of galaxy environment on the evolution and survival…
Accurate determinations of stellar mass functions and ages of stellar populations are crucial to much of astrophysics. We analyse the evolution of stellar mass functions of coeval main sequence stars including all relevant aspects of…
Observations have revealed that most stars are born in clusters. These systems, containing from tens to thousands of stars and typically significant mass in gas in the youngest systems, evolve due to a combination of stellar and star-gas…
Blue stragglers are thought to be formed from the merger or coalescence of two stars, but the details of their formation in clusters has been difficult to disentangle. We discuss the two main formation mechanisms for blue stragglers…
Star clusters are observed to form in a highly compact state and with low star-formation efficiencies, and only 10 per cent of all clusters appear to survive to middle- and old-dynamical age. If the residual gas is expelled on a dynamical…
Stars in star clusters are thought to form in a single burst from a common progenitor cloud of molecular gas. However, massive, old globular clusters -- with ages greater than 10 billion years and masses of several hundred thousand solar…
The evolution of galaxies is driven strongly by dynamical processes including internal instabilities, tidal interactions and mergers. The cluster environment is a useful laboratory for studying these effects. I present recent results on…
Observations indicate blue globular clusters have half-light radii systematically larger than those of red globular clusters. In this paper, we test whether the different metallicity-dependent stellar evolution timescales and mass-loss…