Related papers: Open clusters: time-scales, core collapse and blue…
Globular clusters should be born with significant numbers of stellar-mass black holes (BHs). It has been thought for two decades that very few of these BHs could be retained through the cluster lifetime. With masses ~10 MSun, BHs are ~20…
The relaxation time at the half-mass radius of Galactic globular clusters (GGCs) is typically within a few Gyr. Hence, the majority of GGCs are expected to be well relaxed systems, given their age is around 12-13 Gyr. So any initial radial…
Blue straggler stars are more massive than the average star in globular clusters, as they originate from the merger of two stars. Consequently, they experience dynamical friction, progressively sinking to the cluster center. Recently,…
(Abridged) We study the nuclear star clusters in spiral galaxies of various Hubble types using spectra obtained with STIS on-board HST. We observed the nuclear clusters in 40 galaxies, selected from two previous HST/WFPC2 imaging surveys.…
Blue stragglers are anomalously luminous core hydrogen-burning stars formed through mass-transfer in binary/triple systems and stellar collisions. Their physical and evolutionary properties are largely unknown and unconstrained. Here we…
We study the stellar cluster population in two adjacent fields in the nearby, face-on spiral galaxy, M83, using WFC3/HST imaging. The clusters are selected through visual inspection to be centrally concentrated, symmetric, and resolved on…
Stars in globular clusters are generally believed to have all formed at the same time, early in the Galaxy's history. 'Blue stragglers' are stars massive enough that they should have evolved into white dwarfs long ago. Two possible…
We have used the ``dynamical clock'' to measure the level of dynamical evolution reached by three Galactic globular clusters (namely, NGC 3201, NGC 6316 and NGC 6440). This is an empirical method that quantifies the level of central…
We measure and analyze galaxy clustering and the dependence on luminosity, color, age, stellar mass and specific star formation rate using Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) galaxies at $0.48<z<0.62$. We fit the monopole and…
Recent high-quality Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry shows that the main sequences (MS) stars of young star clusters form two discrete components in the color-magnitude diagram (CMD). Based on their distribution in the CMD, we show…
Recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have revealed that a large fraction of late-type (Sc and later) spiral galaxies harbor a bright, compact stellar cluster in their dynamical centers. Statistics of the mass, age, and…
The dynamical evolution of globular clusters is theoretically described by a series of well known events typical of N-body systems. Still, the identification of observational signatures able to empirically describe the stage of dynamical…
The open star clusters (OSC) are important tracers for understanding the Galactic evolution. The parametric study of these astronomical-objects is crucial task due to the appearing sequence of the members of OSC. These members are defined…
We present a multi-passband photometric study of the Blue Straggler Star (BSS) population in the Galactic globular cluster (GC) NGC\,1261, using available space- and ground-based survey data.~The inner BSS population is found to have two…
We have used high resolution WFPC2-HST and wide field ground-based observations to construct a catalog of blue straggler stars (BSS) in the globular cluster 47 Tuc spanning the entire radial extent of the cluster. The BSS distribution is…
We continue our exploration of collisionally merged stars in the blue straggler region of the color-magnitude diagram. We report the results of new SPH calculations of parabolic collisions between two main-sequence stars, with the initial…
The study of star cluster evolution necessitates modeling how their density profiles develop from their natal gas distribution. Observational evidence indicates that many star clusters follow a Plummer-like density profile. However, most…
The old (7 Gyr) open cluster NGC 188 has yielded a wealth of astrophysical insight into its rich blue straggler population. Specifically, the NGC 188 blue stragglers are characterized by: A binary frequency of 80% for orbital periods less…
This chapter describes the current state of models of individual blue stragglers. Stellar collisions, binary mergers (or coalescence), and partial or ongoing mass transfer have all been studied in some detail. The products of stellar…
We present early results from a detailed analysis of the BSS population in Galactic GCs based on HST data.Using proper motion cleaning of the color-magnitude diagrams we construct a large catalog of BSSs and study some population…