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. Their contribution to the total luminosity induced by such…
Most stars are born in the crowded environments of gradually forming star clusters. Dynamical interactions between close-passing stars and the evolving UV radiation fields from proximate massive stars are expected to sculpt the…
Violent relaxation -- the protocluster dynamical response to the expulsion of its residual star forming gas -- is a short albeit crucial episode in the evolution of star clusters and star cluster systems. Because it is heavily driven by…
Equations governing the evolution of a star involve multiple coupling constants. Thus, the time it spends as a main-sequence star can be expected to depend on whether or not such constants vary over the time scale of stellar evolution. When…
Studies of evolved massive stars indicate that they form in a clustered mode. During the earliest evolutionary stages, these regions are embedded within their natal cores. Here, we show high-spatial-resolution interferometric dust continuum…
The orbit distribution of young stars in the Galactic disk is highly structured, from well-defined clusters to streams of stars that may be widely dispersed across the sky, but are compact in orbital action-angle space. The age distribution…
Recent images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of the interacting disk galaxies NGC 4038/4039 (the Antennae) reveal clusters of many dozens and possibly hundreds of young compact massive star clusters within projected regions…
We investigate whether the dynamical status of clusters is related to the large-scale structure of the Universe. We find that cluster substructure is strongly correlated with the tendency of clusters to be aligned with their nearest…
The presence of multiple stellar populations in globular clusters leads to a complex dynamical environment that significantly influences the evolution of binary stars, which in turn impacts the evolution of the cluster itself. For this…
The properties of old globular cluster systems in galaxy halos are used to infer quantitative constraints on aspects of generic star (cluster) formation. First, the spatial distribution of globulars in three large galaxies, together with…
AIMS: The cluster of hot stars observed in orbit around the central black hole of M31 has been interpreted as a 200 Myr starburst. The formation of a population of young stars in close proximity to a massive black hole presents a difficult…
Stars with circumstellar disks may form in environments with high stellar and gas densities which affects the disks through processes like truncation from dynamical encounters, ram pressure stripping, and external photoevaporation.…
Bifurcated patterns of blue straggler stars in their color--magnitude diagrams have atracted significant attention. This type of special (but rare) pattern of two distinct blue straggler sequences is commonly interpreted as evidence of…
Dynamical models of star clusters are maturing in the sense that effects other than simple point particle dynamics are taken into account. We summarize the relevance of and prospects for this new generation of N-body models.
Globular Cluster (GC) formation seems to be a widespread mode of star formation in extreme starbursts triggered by strong interactions and mergers of massive gas-rich galaxies. We use our detailed chemically consistent evolutionary…
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…
Star clusters form in dense, hierarchically collapsing gas clouds. Bulk kinetic energy is transformed to turbulence with stars forming from cores fed by filaments. In the most compact regions, stellar feedback is least effective in removing…
The origin of the chemical anomalies in star clusters is still an open question, although much effort has been employed both from a theoretical and observational point of view. The exploration of whether such multiple stellar populations…
(Abridged) The formation and evolution of star cluster populations are related to the galactic environment. Cluster formation is governed by processes acting on galactic scales, and star cluster disruption is driven by the tidal field. In…
A major paradigm shift has recently revolutionized our picture of globular clusters (GC) that were long thought to be simple systems of coeval stars born out of homogeneous material. Indeed, detailed abundance studies of GC long-lived…