Related papers: The intracluster light and its role in galaxy evol…
Intracluster light is thought to originate from stars that were ripped away from their parent galaxies by gravitational tides and galaxy interactions during the build up of the cluster. The stars from such interactions will accumulate over…
It is currently impossible to determine the abundances and ages of the stellar populations of distant, dense stellar systems star by star. Therefore, methods to analyze the composite light of stellar systems are required. I review the…
The evolution of galaxies is driven strongly by dynamical processes including internal instabilities, tidal interactions and mergers. The cluster environment is a useful laboratory for studying these effects. I present recent results on…
We investigate on the role of the halo concentration in the formation of the intra-cluster light (ICL) in galaxy groups and clusters, as predicted by a state-of-art semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, coupled with a set of…
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…
The main aspects of the globular cluster luminosity function needing to be explained by a general theory of cluster formation are reviewed, and the importance of simultaneously understanding globular cluster systematics (the fundamental…
The determination of galaxy cluster mass is of great importance since it is directly linked to the well- known problem of dark matter in the Universe and to the cluster baryon content. X-ray observations from satellites have enabled a…
The presence of a diffuse stellar component in galaxy clusters has been established by a number of observational works in recent years. In this contribution I summarize our results (Zibetti et al. 2005) obtained by stacking SDSS images of…
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…
This paper addresses the questions of what we have learned about how and when dense star clusters form, and what studies of star clusters have revealed about galaxy formation and evolution. One important observation is that globular…
The diffuse stellar component of galaxy clusters known as intracluster light (ICL) has been proposed as an observable tracer of the cluster's dark matter (DM) halo. Assessing its reliability as a DM tracer requires understanding how the…
We are learning much about how structure forms, in particular how clusters as nodes in the cosmic web evolve and accrete matter, and about the physical processes within these objects. In the next decade, the study of clusters will enable us…
Intracluster light (ICL) is diffuse light from stars that are gravitationally bound not to individual member galaxies, but to the halo of galaxy clusters. Leading theories predict that the ICL fraction, defined by the ratio of the ICL to…
Most clusters and groups of galaxies contain a giant elliptical galaxy in their centres which far outshines and outweighs normal ellipticals. The origin of these brightest cluster galaxies is intimately related to the collapse and formation…
We report the search for intracluster light in four Abell Type II/III (non-cD) galaxy clusters: Abell 801, 1234, 1553, & 1914. We find on average that these clusters contain $\sim$ 10% of their detected stellar luminosity in a diffuse…
Stellar clusters are born in cold and dusty molecular clouds and the youngest clusters are embedded to various degrees in dusty dark molecular material. Such embedded clusters can be considered protocluster systems. The most deeply buried…
Whether the X-ray luminosities of clusters of galaxies evolve has been a contentious issue for over ten years. However, the data available to address this issue have improved dramatically as cluster surveys from the ROSAT archive near…
We use a multi million particle N-body + SPH simulation to follow the formation of a rich galaxy cluster in a Lambda+CDM cosmology, with the goal of understanding the origin and properties of intracluster stars. The simulation includes gas…
X-ray observations of clusters at different redshifts are presented and compared. For the nearest cluster -- the Virgo cluster -- we show a comparison of the galaxy distribution and the distribution of the intra-cluster gas. Although the…
We investigate the near-infrared K-band properties of the brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in a sample of 93 galaxy clusters and groups, using data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey. Our cluster sample spans a factor of 70 in mass, making…