Related papers: Confidence levels of evolutionary synthesis models
In this contribution I will discuss fundamental stellar parameters as determined from young star clusters; specifically those with ages less than or approximately equal to that of the Pleiades. I will focus primarily on the use of stellar…
We use a simple one-zone galactic chemical evolution model to quantify the uncertainties generated by the input parameters in numerical predictions, for a galaxy with properties similar to those of the Milky Way. We compiled several studies…
A stellar population synthesis model, suitable for comparison with Giant Extragalactic HII Regions (GEHRs), is constructed incorporating the recent developments in modelling stellar evolution by Maeder and co-workers and stellar atmospheres…
[Abridged] Twenty-six high-luminosity IRAS sources believed to be collection of stars in the early phases of high-mass star formation have been observed in the NIR (J, H, K) to characterize the clustering properties of their young stellar…
The evolution of HII regions/supershells can trigger a new generation of stars/clusters at their peripheries, with environmental conditions that may affect the initial mass function, disk evolution and star formation efficiency. In this…
We report the results of a detailed numerical study designed to estimate both the absolute age and the uncertainty in age (with confidence limits) of the oldest globular clusters. Such an estimate is essential if a comparison with the…
We present a new set of stellar interior and synthesis models for predicting the integrated emission from stellar populations in star clusters and galaxies of arbitrary age and metallicity. This work differs from existing spectral synthesis…
JWST observations, when combined with HST data, promise to improve age estimates of star clusters in nearby spiral galaxies. However, feedback from young cluster stars pushes out the natal gas and dust, making cluster formation and…
Star clusters are studied widely both as benchmarks for stellar evolution models and in their own right. Cluster age and mass distributions within galaxies are probes of star formation histories, and of cluster formation and disruption…
Synthesis models predict the integrated properties of stellar populations. Several problems exist in this field, mostly related to the fact that integrated properties are distributed. To date, this aspect has been either ignored (as in…
We demonstrate the feasibility of detecting directly low mass stars in unresolved super-star clusters with ages < 10 Myr using near-infrared spectroscopy at modest resolution (R ~ 1000). Such measurements could constrain the ratio of high…
Low-mass stars (M<0.4Msun) are thought to comprise the bulk of the stellar mass of galaxies but they constitute only of order a percent of the bolometric luminosity of an old stellar population. Directly estimating the number of low-mass…
A new set of stellar models in the mass range 1.2 to 9 $M_{\odot}$ is presented. The adopted chemical compositions cover the typical galactic values, namely $0.0001 \le Z \le 0.02$ and $0.23 \le Y \le 0.28$. A comparison among the most…
We discuss the systematic uncertainties inherent to analyses of observed (broad-band) Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) of star clusters with evolutionary synthesis models. We investigate the effects caused by restricting oneself to a…
The structure of cloud complexes appears to be well described by a "tree structure" representation when the image is partitioned into "clouds". In this representation, the parent-child relationships are assigned according to containment.…
In this contribution we evaluate the minimal cluster mass for which the effects of an incomplete sampling of the Initial Mass Function (IMF) cannot be neglected. This minimal cluster mass corresponds to the situation in which the integrated…
(ABRIDGED) We assess the systematic uncertainties in (young) cluster age, mass, and - to a lesser extent - extinction and metallicity determinations, based on broad-band imaging observations with the Hubble Space Telescope. Our aim here is…
The surface brightness profiles of globular clusters are conventionally described with the well-known King profile. However, observations of young massive clusters (YMCs) in the local Universe suggest that they are better fit by simple…
We summarize recent observational and theoretical progress aimed at understanding the origin of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) with specific focus on galactic star-forming regions. We synthesize data from various efforts to…
Gaseous and stellar metallicities in galaxies are nowadays routinely used to constrain the evolutionary processes in galaxies. This requires the knowledge of the average yield per stellar generation, $y_{\text{Z}}$, i.e. the quantity of…