Related papers: O, Na, Ba and Eu abundance patterns in open cluste…
Abundances of Mg, Ca, Sc, Cr, Fe, and Ni are derived for A stars of five nearby open clusters of various ages using high resolution spectroscopy. We point out a correlation between the abundance of Ca and that of Sc, suggesting that the…
I briefly review what has been recently learned from determinations of mean stellar ages and abundances from integrated light studies of early-type galaxies, and discuss some new questions posed by recent data. A short discussion of…
In the framework of a project aiming at deriving in a homogeneous way the properties (age, distance, reddening and detailed chemical abundances) of a large sample of old open clusters, we present here the metal abundance and the abundance…
We have analysed images of the field of A2390 obtained with the CFHT and HST. The analysis fits models to bulge and disk components to several hundred galaxies, with about equal samples from the cluster and field. We also have assessed and…
This paper explores if the mean properties of Early-Type Galaxies (ETG) can be reconstructed from "genetic" information stored in their GCs (i.e., in their chemical abundances, spatial distributions and ages). This approach implies that the…
Open star clusters are the essential building blocks of the Galactic disk; "strong chemical tagging" - the premise that all star clusters can be reconstructed given chemistry information alone - is a driving force behind many current and…
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,…
As sites of some of the most efficient star formation in the Universe, globular clusters (GCs) have long been hypothesized to be the building blocks of young galaxies. Within the Milky Way, our best tracers of the contribution of GCs to the…
In order to investigate the origin of multiple stellar populations in the halo and bulge of the Milky Way, we have constructed chemical evolution models for the low-mass proto-Galactic subsystems such as globular clusters (GCs). Unlike…
Recent observations demonstrate that the thin and thick disks of the Galaxy have different chemical abundance trends and evolution timescales. The relative abundances of $\alpha$-elements in the thick Galactic disk are increased relative to…
Stars form predominantly in groups usually denoted as clusters or associations. The observed stellar groups display a broad spectrum of masses, sizes and other properties, so it is often assumed that there is no underlying structure in this…
We use Cycle 21 Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations and HST archival ACS Treasury observations of 30 Galactic Globular Clusters to characterize two distinct stellar populations. A sophisticated Bayesian technique is employed to…
The globular cluster $\omega$ Centauri (NGC 5139) is a puzzling stellar system harboring several distinct stellar populations whose origin still represents a unique astrophysical challenge. Current scenarios range from primordial chemical…
In this paper I present some recent and new results regarding the effects of the cluster environment on the star formation history of galaxies. Three main aspects are discussed: the differences in the stellar population ages of cluster…
In this work, we study the formation and chemical evolution of the Galactic bulge with particular focus on the abundance pattern ([Mg/Fe] vs. [Fe/H]), metallicity and age distribution functions. We consider detailed chemical evolution…
The last decade has seen a revolution in our knowledge of the Galaxy thanks to the Gaia and asteroseismic space missions and the ground-based spectroscopic surveys. To complete this picture, it is necessary to map the ages of its stellar…
Open clusters have long been used as tracers of Galactic structure. However, without a selection function to describe the completeness of the cluster census, it is difficult to quantitatively interpret their distribution. We create a method…
We argue that rich star clusters take at least several local dynamical times to form, and so are quasi-equilibrium structures during their assembly. Observations supporting this conclusion include morphologies of star-forming clumps,…
We analyzed the shapes of Galactic open clusters by the star counting technique with the 2MASS star catalog database. Morphological parameters such as the ellipticity and size have been derived via stellar density distribution, weighed by…
We observed 6 He-clump stars of the intermediate-age stellar cluster Gaia1 with the MIKE/MAGELLAN spectrograph. A possible extra-galactic origin of this cluster, recently discovered thanks to the first data release of the ESA Gaia mission,…