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The formation of stars is a key process in astrophysics. Detailed knowledge of the physical mechanisms that govern stellar birth is a prerequisite for understanding the formation and evolution of our galactic home, the Milky Way. A theory…
Stellar ages are key for determining the formation history of the Milky Way, but are difficult to measure precisely. Furthermore, methods that use chemical abundances to infer ages may entangle the intrinsic evolution of stars with the…
Dusty galaxies with luminosities in excess of 10^11 solar luminosities have been detected out to redshifts of about unity by the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), and to higher redshifts using millimetre(mm)- and submm-wave cameras on…
Open and globular star clusters have served as benchmarks for the study of stellar evolution due to their supposed nature as simple stellar populations of the same age and metallicity. After a brief review of some of the pioneering work…
Over the last half-century quantitative stellar spectroscopy has made great progress. However, most stellar abundance analyses today still employ rather simplified models, which can introduce severe systematic errors swamping the…
The origin of the chemical anomalies in star clusters is still an open question, although much effort has been employed both from a theoretical and observational point of view. The exploration of whether such multiple stellar populations…
Present knowledge indicates that gamma-ray bursts are linked with massive stars. They will become invaluable probes of the early universe and galaxy formation. In the future, it will be possible to use gamma-ray bursts for two purposes: 1)…
We show that the UV flux of old stellar systems can tell us about their ages. Two independent populations synthesis groups that have had wildly different views have here worked together and generated two solutions that can be easily tested…
The issue of a starburst-AGN connection in local and distant galaxies is relevant for understanding galaxy formation and evolution, the star formation and metal enrichment history of the universe, the origin of the extragalactic background…
Ball lightning is a very rarely observed phenomenon that makes it extremely difficult to characterize scientifically. Eye-witness accounts of ball lightning that describe many features in common have been variously recorded for centuries.…
Horizontal branch (HB) stars play a particularly important role in the "age debate," since they are at the very center of the long-standing "second parameter" problem. In this review, I discuss some recent progress in our understanding of…
Star formation is a multi-scale, multi-physics problem ranging from the size scale of molecular clouds ($\sim$10s pc) down to the size scales of dense prestellar cores ($\sim$0.1 pc) that are the birth sites of stars. Several physical…
Our understanding of stars and their fates is based on coupling observations to theoretical models. Unlike laboratory physicists, we cannot perform experiments on stars, but rather must patiently take what nature allows us to observe.…
During the last few decades, great effort has been made towards understanding hydrodynamical processes which determine the structure and evolution of stars. Up to now, the most stringent constraints have been provided by helioseismology and…
In spite of significant recent and ongoing research efforts, most of the early evolution and long-term fate of young massive star clusters remain clouded in uncertainties. Here, I discuss our understanding of the initial conditions of star…
Starburst99 is a comprehensive set of model predictions for spectrophotometric and related properties of galaxies with active star formation. The models are an improved and extended version of the data set previously published by Leitherer…
We numerically investigate stellar and gaseous dynamical evolution of mergers between five identical late-type disk galaxies with the special emphasis on star formation history and chemical evolution of multiple galaxy mergers. We found…
Gyrochronology, the field of age-dating stars using mainly their rotation periods and masses, is ideal for inferring the ages of individual main-sequence stars. However, due to the lack of physical understanding of the complex magnetic…
Pulsars are remarkably precise "celestial clocks" that can be used to explore many different aspects of physics and astrophysics. In this article I give a brief summary of pulsar properties and describe some of the applications of pulsar…
In these lecture notes I describe some of the main theoretical ideas emerged to explain the aging dynamics. This is meant to be a very short introduction to aging dynamics and no previous knowledge is assumed. I will go through simple…