Related papers: Probabilities for Solar Siblings
Observations of young open clusters show a bimodal distribution of stellar rotation. Sun-like stars in those clusters group into two main sub-populations of fast and slow rotators. Beyond an age of about 500 Myrs, the two populations…
This paper is the first of a series addressed to the investigation of galaxy formation/evolution in small scale systems of galaxies (SSSGs) which are located in low density cosmic environments. Our algorithm for SSSG selection includes…
Modern hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation are able to predict accurately the rates and locations of the assembly of giant molecular clouds in early galaxies. These clouds could host star clusters with the masses and sizes of real…
I discuss recent theoretical work on the formation and evolution of galaxies paying particular attention to the ability of current models to make detailed comparisons with observations of the galaxy population both nearby and at high…
The sample of known star clusters, the fundamental building blocks of galaxies, in the Milky Way is still extremely incomplete for objects beyond a distance of 1-2kpc. Many of the more distant and young clusters are compact and hidden…
Star clusters are ideal tracers of star formation activity in systems outside the volume that can be studied using individual, resolved stars. These unresolved clusters span orders of magnitude in brightness and mass, and their formation is…
A star passing within $\sim 10^4 \au$ of the Sun would trigger a comet shower that would reach the inner solar system about 0.18 Myr later. We calculate a prior probability of ~0.4% that a star has passed this close to the Sun but that the…
We review recent work that investigates the formation of stellar clusters, ranging in scale from globular clusters through open clusters to the small scale aggregates of stars observed in T associations. In all cases, recent advances in…
Recent surveys of star forming regions have shown that most stars, and probably all massive stars, are born in dense stellar clusters. The mechanism by which a molecular cloud fragments to form several hundred to thousands of individual…
Improved observations of globular clusters are uncovering a large number of radio pulsars and of X-ray sources. The latter include binaries in which a neutron star or a white dwarf accretes matter from a companion, recycled pulsars, and…
The formation of stars above about twenty solar masses and their apparently high multiplicity remain heavily debated subjects in astrophysics. We have performed a vast high-resolution radial velocity spectroscopic survey of about 250 O- and…
Little is known about the stellar environment and the genealogy of our solar system. Short-lived radionuclides (SLRs, mean lifetime shorter than 100 Myr) that were present in the solar protoplanetary disk 4.56 Gyr ago could potentially…
Most star complexes are in fact complexes of stars, clusters and gas clouds; term "star complexes" was introduced as general one disregarding the preferential content of a complex. Generally the high rate of star formation in a complex is…
We review progress in numerical simulations of star cluster formation. These simulations involve the bottom-up assembly of clusters through hierarchical mergers, which produces a fractal stellar distribution at young (~0.5 Myr) ages. The…
Based on the most complete sample of Galactic open star clusters up to 1.8 kpc, we performed statistical analysis of the distribution of open cluster parameters in order to understand the Galactic structure. The geometrical characteristics…
Be stars are a class of rapidly rotating B stars with circumstellar disks that cause Balmer and other line emission. There are three possible reasons for the rapid rotation of Be stars: they may have been born as rapid rotators, spun up by…
Groups of young stars located in the solar neighborhood have recently received a lot of attention. These stars, which are $\lesssim$ 10 million years old, can provide insights into the birth of stars and planetary systems. For example, the…
Be stars are widely considered to be the product of binary interaction. However, whether all Be stars are formed via binary interaction is unclear, and detailed estimates of the multiplicity of Be stars and characterization of their…
If the origin of life and the evolution of observers on a planet is favoured by atypical properties of a planet's host star, we would expect our Sun to be atypical with respect to such properties. The Sun has been described by previous…
We combine a semi-analytic model of galaxy evolution with constraints on circumstellar habitable zones and the distribution of terrestrial planets to probe the suitability of galaxies of different mass and type to host habitable planets,…