Related papers: Studying Young Stars with Large Spectroscopic Surv…
The arena of investigation of star formation and its scaling laws is slowly, but consistently, shifting from the realm of luminous galaxies to that of faint ones and to sub--galactic regions, as existing and new facilities enable…
We study the possibility that the Milky Way's cool stellar disc includes mergers with ancient stars. Galaxies are understood to form in a hierarchical manner, where smaller (proto-)galaxies merge into larger ones. Stars in galaxies, like…
Stars in the Galactic disk are born on cold, nearly circular orbits with small vertical excursions. After their birth, their orbits evolve, driven by small- or large-scale perturbations in the Galactic disk's gravitational potential. Here,…
The study of colliding galaxies has progressed rapidly in the last few years, driven by observations with powerful new ground and space-based instruments. These instruments have used for detailed studies of specific nearby systems,…
The ensemble of all star clusters in a galaxy constitutes its star cluster system. In this review, the focus of the discussion is on the ability of star clusters, particularly the systems of old massive globular clusters (GCSs), to mark the…
In the distant past, astronomy was often intertwined with religion into a unified cosmos. As science became a distinct cultural enterprise, astronomy has witnessed a variety of rich interactions with other fields. Mathematical statistics…
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…
Information about the make-up of the galaxy arrives in the Solar system in many forms: photons of different energies, classically collected by ground- and space-based telescopes, neutral and charged atomic particles, and solid macroscopic…
The details of bulge formation via collapse, mergers, secular processes or their interplay remain unresolved. To start answering this question and quantify the importance of distinct mechanisms, we mapped a sample of three galactic bulges…
Gamma-Ray Bursts represent unique tools to study the early phases of cosmic evolution, the formation of the first stars and galaxies. Absorption line spectra of these sources located in the Epoch of Reionization might provide us with key…
I discuss the chemical and spectrophotometric evolution of galaxies over cosmological timescales and present a first attempt to treat both aspects in a chemically consistent way. In our evolutionary synthesis approach, we account for the…
The Milky Way serves as a template for understanding the formation and evolution of late-type massive disk galaxies since we can obtain detailed chemical and kinematic information for large samples of individual stars. However, the early…
A direct observation of the spiral structure of the Galaxy is hindered by our position in the middle of the Galactic plane. We propose a method based on the analysis of the birthplaces of high Galactic latitude runaway stars to map the…
Globular star clusters are extremely important astrophysical objects since (1) they are prime laboratories for testing stellar evolution; (2) they are ``fossils'' from the epoch of galaxy formation, and thus important cosmological tools;…
Very metal-poor massive stars in the Local Group are our best proxies for the Universe's first stars, making them essential for modeling reionization and early galactic chemical evolution. Studying such stars in our Local Universe is key to…
The study of the Milky Way stellar discs in the context of galaxy formation is discussed. In particular we explore the properties of the Milky Way disc using a new sample of about 550 dwarf stars for which we have recently obtained…
[abridged] Unbound young stellar systems, the loose ensembles of physically related young bright stars, trace the typical regions of recent star formation in galaxies. Their morphologies vary from small associations of stars to enormous…
The full spatio-chemo-dynamical structure of galaxies of all types and environments at low redshift provides a critical accompaniment to observations of galaxy formation at high redshift. The next decade brings the observational opportunity…
Most stars are born in rich young stellar clusters (YSCs) embedded in giant molecular clouds. The most massive stars live out their short lives there, profoundly influencing their natal environments by ionizing HII regions, inflating…
The Galactic disk retains a vast amount of information about how it came to be, and how it evolved over cosmic time. However, we know very little about the secular processes associated with disk evolution. One major uncertainty is the…