Related papers: Galactic nuclear activity induced by globular clus…
I assess the similarities and differences between the star-formation modes in quiescent spiral galaxies versus those in violent starburst regions, including galactic nuclei. As opposed to the quiescent star-formation mode, current empirical…
This paper addresses the questions of what we have learned about how and when dense star clusters form, and what studies of star clusters have revealed about galaxy formation and evolution. One important observation is that globular…
The radial distribution of globular clusters in our Galaxy, M31 and M87 is studied and compared with that of halo stars. The globular cluster distributions seem significantly flatter than those of the stars bulge. Assuming this is a…
A brief overview of the properties of massive star clusters in early-type galaxies is given. All ellipticals (with only one known exception) host massive star clusters in the form of globular clusters, suggesting that their formation is…
Understanding the formation of globular clusters will help us to constrain the evolutionary history of galaxies. For mergers on-going today, it appears that the number of newly created proto-globulars varies with the progenitor types and…
This review concentrates almost entirely on globular star clusters. It emphasises the increasing realisation that few of the traditional problems of star cluster astronomy can be studied in isolation: the influence of the Galaxy affects…
The most massive elliptical galaxies show a prominent multi-modality in their globular cluster system color distributions. Understanding the mechanisms which lead to multiple globular cluster sub-populations is essential for a complete…
I discuss the chemical evolution of star clusters, with emphasis on old globular clusters, in relation to their formation histories. Globular clusters clearly formed in a complex fashion, under markedly different conditions from any younger…
The present-day globular cluster populations of galaxies reflect the cumulative effects of billions of years of galaxy evolution via such processes as mergers, tidal stripping, accretion, and in some cases the partial or even complete…
Galactic globular clusters are ancient building blocks of our Galaxy. They represent a very interesting family of stellar systems in which some fundamental dynamical processes have been taking place for more than 10 Gyr, but on time scales…
Dynamical friction and tidal disruption are effective mechanisms of evolution of globular cluster systems, especially in non-axysimmetric galaxies with a central compact nucleus. With a semi-analytical approach based on the knowledge of the…
Globular clusters contain multiple stellar populations, with some previous generation of stars polluting the current stars with heavier elements. Understanding the history of globular clusters is helpful in understanding how galaxies merged…
This paper looks for any correlation between the internal dynamics of elliptical galaxies and the relatively mild nuclear activity found in many such systems. We show that there is such a relation in the sense that the active ellipticals…
Star clusters that form in nuclear rings appear to be at slightly larger radii than the gas. We argue that the star clusters move out from the gas in which they are formed because of satellite-disk tidal interactions. In calculating the…
Globular clusters are large and dense agglomerate of stars. At variance with smaller clusters of stars, they exhibit signs of some chemical evolution. At least for this reason, they are intermediate between open clusters and massive objects…
The colors of globular clusters in most of large elliptical galaxies are bimodal. This is generally taken as evidence for the presence of two cluster subpopulations that have different geneses. However, here we find that, because of the…
A large fraction of bulgeless disk galaxies contain young compact stellar systems at their centers, in spite of the local gravitational stability of these disks. We evaluate two contrasting hypotheses for the origin of the nuclear star…
Nuclear star clusters are among the densest stellar systems known and are common in both early- and late-type galaxies. They exhibit scaling relations with their host galaxy which may be related to those of supermassive black holes. These…
We present an end-to-end description of the formation process of globular clusters (GCs) which combines a treatment for their formation and dynamical evolution within galaxy haloes with a state-of-the-art semi-analytic simulation of galaxy…
We propose and investigate a new formation mechanism for globular clusters in which they form within molecular clouds that are formed in the shocked regions created by galactic winds driven by successive supernova explosions shortly after…