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Observations of star formation rates (SFRs) in galaxies provide vital clues to the physical nature of the Hubble sequence, and are key probes of the evolutionary properties of galaxies. The focus of this review is on the broad patterns in…
The major effects of the chemical evolution of galaxies on the characteristics of their stellar populations are reviewed. A few examples of how the observed stellar properties derived from colour--magnitude diagrams can constrain chemical…
We investigate the origin of star formation activity in early-type galaxies with current star formation using spatially resolved spectroscopic data from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We…
For several decades now, open clusters have been used to study the structure and chemical evolution of the disk of our Galaxy. Due to the fact that their ages and metallicities can be determined with relatively good precision, and since…
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…
Galaxies form and evolve in the context of their local and large-scale environments. Their baryonic content that we observe with imaging and spectroscopy is intimately connected to the properties of their dark matter halos, and to their…
Although rare, massive stars, being the main sources of ionizing radiation, chemical enrichment and mechanical energy in the Galaxy, are the most important objects of the stellar population. This review presents the many different aspects…
Massive stars are essential to understand a variety of branches of astronomy including galaxy and star cluster evolution, nucleosynthesis and supernovae, pulsars and black holes. It has become evident that massive star evolution is very…
The goal of this investigation is to reconstruct the cosmic star formation rate density history from local observations and in doing so to gain insight into how galaxies might have formed and evolved. A new chemical evolution model is…
Massive stars condition the evolution of the interstellar medium by the amount of energy released during their lives and especially by their deaths as supernova explosions. The vast amounts of spectroscopic data for massive stars provided…
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…
The polarization of light is a critically under-utilized, rich source of information in astronomy. For stars in particular, surface magnetism polarization that can be detected and measured with spectro-polarimetry. Many questions about…
[Abridged] Luminous hot stars dominate the stellar energy input to the interstellar medium throughout cosmological time, they are laboratories to test theories of stellar evolution and multiplicity, and they serve as luminous tracers of…
One of the challenges for stellar astrophysics is to reach the point at which we can undertake reliable spectral synthesis of unresolved populations in young, star-forming galaxies at high redshift. Here I summarise recent studies of…
The star-formation histories of the main stellar components of the Milky Way constrain critical aspects of galaxy formation and evolution. I discuss recent determinations of such histories, together with their interpretation in terms of…
We have used a large sample of low-inclination spiral galaxies with radially-resolved optical and near-infrared photometry to investigate trends in star formation history with radius as a function of galaxy structural parameters. A maximum…
Accurate characterization of stellar populations is of prime importance to correctly understand the formation and evolution process of our Galaxy. The field of asteroseismology has been particularly successful in such an endeavor providing…
Convection is ubiquitous in stars and occurs under many different conditions. Here we explore convection in main-sequence stars through two lenses: dimensionless parameters arising from stellar structure and parameters which emerge from the…
With the start of the Gaia era, the time has come to address the major challenge of deriving the star formation history and evolution of the disk of our MilkyWay. Here we review our present knowledge of the outer regions of the Milky Way…
It is widely accepted that stars do not form in isolation but result from the fragmentation of molecular clouds, which in turn leads to star cluster formation. Over time, clusters dissolve or are destroyed by interactions with molecular…