Related papers: Blue Straggler Stars: Early Observations that Fail…
Blue stragglers are anomalously luminous core hydrogen-burning stars formed through mass-transfer in binary/triple systems and stellar collisions. Their physical and evolutionary properties are largely unknown and unconstrained. Here we…
Globular clusters are known to host peculiar objects, named Blue Straggler Stars (BSSs), significantly heavier than the normal stellar population. While these stars can be easily identified during their core hydrogen-burning phase, they are…
Aims: This paper presents a new homogeneous catalogue of blue straggler stars (BSS) in Galactic open clusters. Methods: Photometric data for 216 clusters were collected from the literature and 2782 BSS candidates were extracted from 76 of…
Blue straggler stars (BSSs) are brighter and bluer than the main-sequence (MS) turnoff and more massive than MS stars.Two scenarios for their formation have been proposed: collision-induced stellar mergers (COL-BSSs),or mass-transfer in…
In this paper I present an overview of the main observational properties of a special class of exotic objects (the so-called Blue Straggler Stars, BSSs) in Galactic Globular Clusters (GCs). The BSS specific frequency and their radial…
Among the most striking feature of blue straggler stars (BSS) is the presence of multiple sequences of BSSs in the colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of several globular clusters. It is often envisaged that such a multiple BSS sequence would…
We have used multi-band high resolution HST WFPC2 and ACS observations combined with wide field ground-based observations to study the blue straggler star (BSS) population in the galactic globular cluster NGC 6388. As in several other…
High-resolution {\sl Hubble Space Telescope} imaging observations show that the radial distribution of the field-decontaminated sample of 162 'blue straggler' stars (BSs) in the $11.7^{+0.2}_{-0.1}$ Gyr-old Large Magellanic Cloud cluster…
Two blue-straggler sequences discovered in globular cluster M30 provide a strong constraint on the formation mechanisms of blue stragglers. We study the formation of the blue-straggler binaries through binary evolution, and find that binary…
Recent observations of blue stragglers by De Marco et al. (2004) have revealed continuum deficits on the blue side of the Balmer discontinuity, leading these authors to infer the presence of discs around the stars. This intriguing…
Within the variety of objects populating stellar clusters, blue straggler stars (BSSs) are among the most puzzling ones. BSSs are commonly found in globular clusters, but they are also known to populate open clusters of the Milky Way. Two…
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…
The young SMC cluster NGC 330 contains a number of blue stars that lie above the main-sequence turnoff found from our isochrone fitting and below the position of the blue supergiants. We used our own, new spectroscopy and published data on…
To probe the nature of stellar evolution in dense environments, we study the dense core of the globular cluster Messier 13 using pre-refurbishment Planetary Camera-I images obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. We find 15 blue straggler…
We determined accurate positions for 3000 of the "faint blue stars" in the PHL (Palomar-Haro-Luyten) and Ton/TonS catalogues. These were published from 1957 to 1962, and, aimed at finding new white dwarfs, provide approximate positions for…
The field of the globular cluster M12 (NGC 6218) was monitored between 1995 and 2009 in a search for variable stars. $BV$ light curves were obtained for 36 periodic or likely periodic variables. Thirty-four of these are new detections.…
We investigate the structure and evolution of blue stragglers stars which were formed from direct stellar collisions between main sequence stars in globular clusters. In particular, we look at the rotational evolution of the products of…
We used a proper combination of multiband high-resolution and wide field multi-wavelength observations collected at three different telescopes (HST, LBT and CFHT) to probe Blue Straggler Star (BSS) populations in the globular cluster M53.…
The astrometric data on the runaway star BD+43 3654 are consistent with the origin of this O4If star in the center of the Cyg OB2 association, while BD+43 3654 is younger than the association. To reconcile this discrepancy, we suggest that…
We present a technique to identify the most probable dynamical formation scenario for an observed binary or triple system containing one or more merger products or, alternatively, to rule out the possibility of a dynamical origin. Our…