Related papers: Old stellar systems in UV: resolved and integrated…
The discovery of an excess of light in the far-ultraviolet (UV) in 1969 in elliptical galaxies was a major surprise. While it is now clear that this UV excess (UV-upturn) is probably caused by an old population of helium-burning stars. Han…
GALEX detected a significant fraction of early-type galaxies showing Far-UV bright structures. These features suggest the occurrence of recent star formation episodes. We aim at understanding their evolutionary path[s] and the mechanisms at…
Determining the properties of old stellar populations (those with age >1 Gyr) has long involved the comparison of their integrated light, either in the form of photometry or spectroscopic indexes, with empirical or synthetic templates. Here…
We briefly review the recent results on hot horizontal-branch stars in globular clusters. Since the first Ivanfest, in 1992, there have been a number of new observational lines of evidence which have allowed significant progress in our…
This series of papers comprises a systematic exploration of the hypothesis that the far ultraviolet radiation from star clusters and elliptical galaxies originates from extremely hot horizontal-branch (HB) stars and their post-HB progeny.…
It is generally accepted today that Galactic globular clusters (GGCs) consist of at least two generations of stars that are different in their chemical composition and perhaps age. However, knowledge about the kinematical properties of…
With the aim of characterizing rejuvenation processes in early-type galaxies, we analyzed five barred S0 galaxies showing prominent outer ring in ultraviolet (UV) imaging. We analyzed GALEX far- (FUV) and near- (NUV) UV and optical data…
Relying on U,B imagery at the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG), we report here the discovery of a sample of 13 new UV-bright post-HB candidate stars in the field of the galactic open cluster NGC 6791. Owing to its super-solar…
In the present work we analyzed seven globular clusters selected from their location in the Galactic bulge and with metallicity values in the range $-1.30\lesssim\rm{[Fe/H]}\lesssim-0.50$. The aim of this work is first to derive cluster…
An increasing number of photometric observations of multiple stellar populations in Galactic globular clusters is seriously challenging the paradigm of GCs hosting single, simple stellar populations. These multiple populations manifest…
Recent observations with Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) show strong unexpected UV excess in the spectrum of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). It is believed that the excess UV signal is produced by old and evolved core-He burning stars,…
The evolution of AGB stars is notoriously complex. The confrontation of AGB population models with observed stellar populations is a useful alternative to the detailed study of individual stars in efforts to converge towards a reliable…
We show the preliminary analysis of some Galactic stellar clusters (GSCls) candidates and the results of the analysis of two new interesting GSCls found in the "VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea" (VVV) Survey. The VVV photometric data are…
We present IR and UV photometry for a sample of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). The BCGs are from a heterogeneous but uniformly characterized sample, the Archive of Chandra Cluster Entropy Profile Tables (ACCEPT), of X-ray galaxy…
We report on intriguing photometric properties of Galactic stars observed in the GALEX satellite's far-UV and near-UV bandbasses as well as from the SDSS survey and the Kepler Input Catalog. First, the FUV-NUV color distribution of stars in…
Globular Cluster Systems (GCSs) of most early-type galaxies feature two peaks in their optical colour distributions. Blue-peak GCs are believed to be old and metal-poor, whereas the ages, metallicities, and the origin of the red-peak GCs…
It has been known for over 30 years that Galactic globular clusters (GCs) are overabundant by orders of magnitude in bright X-ray sources per unit mass relative to the disk population. Recently a quantitative understanding of this…
We explore the age distribution of the globular cluster (GC) system of the nearby elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 using ultraviolet (UV) photometry from Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) observations, with UV - optical colors used as the age…
I discuss a scenario in which the ultraviolet (UV) upturn of giant early-type galaxies (ETGs) is primarily due to helium-rich stellar populations that formed in massive metal-rich globular clusters (GCs) which subsequently dissolved in the…
Once fixed the age and metallicity; the colour distribution of horizontal branch stars in a globular cluster depends on few parameters: the helium abundance of the population and the mass lost during the pre-HB stages. These parameters are…