Related papers: Nuclear Star Clusters and Bulges
An analysis of the star cluster population in a low-luminosity early type galaxy, NGC 2328, is presented. The clusters are found in a tight star-forming nuclear spiral/ring pattern and we also identify a bar from structural 2D…
The dynamical evolution of super star clusters (SSCs) moving in the background of a dark matter halo has been investigated as a possible event responsible for the formation of bulges in late-type spirals. The underlying physical processes…
Star clusters that form in nuclear rings appear to be at slightly larger radii than the gas. We argue that the star clusters move out from the gas in which they are formed because of satellite-disk tidal interactions. In calculating the…
Clusters are the dense inner regions of a wide-spread hierarchy of young stellar structures. They often reveal a continuation of this hierarchy inside of them, to smaller scales, when they are young, but orbital mixing eventually erases…
Properties of normal galactic star formation, including the density dependence, threshold density, turbulent scaling relations, and clustering properties, are applied to the formation of galactic bulges. One important difference is that the…
Star formation occurs in hierarchical patterns in both space and time. Galaxies form large regions on the scale of the interstellar Jeans length and these large regions apparently fragment into giant molecular clouds and cloud cores in a…
The majority of spiral and elliptical galaxies in the Universe host very dense and compact stellar systems at their centres known as nuclear star clusters (NSCs). In this work we study the stellar populations and star formation histories…
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…
Most formation scenarios of globular clusters assume a molecular cloud as the progenitor of the stellar system. However, it is still unclear, how this cloud is transformed into a star cluster, i.e. how the destructive processes related to…
Stars are usually formed in clusters in the dense cores of molecular clouds. These embedded clusters show a wide variety of morphologies from hierarchical clusters with substructure to centrally condensed ones. Often they are elongated and…
We investigate the possible connection between the most massive globular clusters, such as $\omega$ Cen and M54, and nuclear star clusters of dwarf galaxies that exhibit similar spreads in age and metallicity. We examine galactic nuclei in…
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…
Some of the most massive globular clusters of our Milky Way, such as for example omega-Centauri, show a mixture of stellar populations spanning a few Gyr in age and 1.5 dex in metallicities. In contrast, standard formation scenarios predict…
Recent photometric observations by the {\it Hubble Space Telescope (HST)} have revealed the physical properties of stellar galactic nuclei in nucleated dwarf galaxies in the Virgo cluster of galaxies. In order to elucidate the formation…
The formation of massive stellar clusters is intricately linked to star formation on local and global scales. All actively star forming galaxies are forming clusters, and the local initial conditions likely determine whether bound massive…
I present recent observations and analyses of star cluster formation in a wide variety of environments -- from young star clusters and super star clusters in normal actively star-forming spirals and irregulars to starbursting dwarfs and…
Super Star Clusters (Mecl > 10^5 Msol) are the largest stellar nurseries in our local Universe, containing hundreds of thousands to millions of young stars within a few light years. Many of these systems are found in external galaxies,…
We investigate the triggering of star formation and the formation of stellar clusters in molecular clouds that form as the ISM passes through spiral shocks. The spiral shock compresses gas into $\sim$100 pc long main star formation ridge,…
Massive stars form in clusters within self-gravitating molecular clouds. The size scale of these clusters is sufficiently large that non-thermal, or turbulent, motions of the gas must be taken into account when considering their formation.…
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…