Related papers: Extragalactic Globular Cluster Systems: A new Pers…
Globular clusters are highly efficient radio pulsar factories. These pulsars can be used as precision probes of the clusters' structure, gas content, magnetic field, and formation history; some of them are also highly interesting in their…
Extremely rich populations of globular clusters, numbering ten thousand or more, surround the central giant galaxies in rich clusters. I discuss some recent spectroscopic and photometric observations of these rich globular clusters…
Reconstructing how all the stellar components of the Galaxy formed and assembled over time, by studying the properties of the stars which make it, is the aim of Galactic archeology. In these last years, thanks to the launch of the ESA Gaia…
Star clusters are observed to form in a highly compact state and with low star-formation efficiencies, and only 10 per cent of all clusters appear to survive to middle- and old-dynamical age. If the residual gas is expelled on a dynamical…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
We probe the evolution of globular clusters that could form in giant molecular clouds within high-redshift galaxies. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the large and dense enough gas clouds assemble naturally in current hierarchical…
The observational properties of globular cluster systems (GCSs) are vital tools to investigate the violent star formation histories of their host galaxies. This violence is thought to have been triggered by galaxy interactions or mergers.…
Visual and near-infrared colours are used to identify intermediate-age globular cluster in early-type galaxies. In NGC5846 and NGC4365 colour-colour diagrams (V-I vs. V-K) reveal a sub-population in the globular cluster systems with an age…
The formation of globular clusters (GCs) remains one of the main unsolved problems in star and galaxy formation. The past decades have seen important progress in constraining the physics of GC formation from a variety of directions. In this…
We recently introduced three new parameters that describe the shape of the normalized cumulative radial distribution (nCRD) of the innermost stars in globular clusters and trace the clusters dynamical evolution. Here we extend our previous…
Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in Universe. They are very important as both cosmological probes and astrophysical laboratories. Several methods have been developed to detect galaxy clusters with different techniques (optical,…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…
Star clusters represent the most common 'mode' of star formation. They are found in all types of environments, cascading down from galaxy groups and merging pairs through starbursts to normal galaxies and dwarves and even isolated regions…
We examine the outer structure of 12 Galactic globular clusters using star-count analyses. Deep, two-color, photographic photometry is used to select and count stars with colors and magnitudes consistent with cluster-specific,…
Globular clusters (GCs), the oldest stellar systems observed in the Milky Way, have for long been considered single stellar populations. As such, they provided an ideal laboratory to understand stellar dynamics and primordial star formation…
It appears that the dynamical status of clusters and groups of galaxies is related to the large-scale structure of the Universe. A few interesting trends have been established: (1) The Cluster Substructure - Alignment Connection, by which…
We summarize the results of recent theoretical work on the dynamical evolution of globular clusters containing primordial binaries. Even a very small initial binary fraction (e.g., 10%) can play a key role in supporting a cluster against…
The motion of the baryonic components of the Milky Way is governed by both luminous and dark matter content of the Galaxy. Thus, the dynamics of the Milky Way globular clusters can be used as tracers to infer the mass model of the Galaxy up…
We propose to radically expand the use of extragalactic globular clusters as tools for extragalactic archaeology. We propose a large-scale spectroscopic facility to obtain high spectral resolution (R $\sim$ 20,000) spectroscopy for a…
We review the properties of globular clusters which make them useful for studying the Galactic halo, Galactic chemical evolution, and the early stages of the formation of the Milky Way. We review the evidence that GCs have a chemical…