Related papers: Horizontal-Branch Morphology as an Age Indicator

The age of three of the oldest clusters -- M15, M68, M92 -- has been redetermined. We use the latest EOS and opacity data available for calculating both isochrones and zero age horizontal branches and employ the brightness difference…

We present a high angular resolution multi-wavelength study of the massive globular cluster NGC 1835 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Thanks to a combination of optical and near ultraviolet images acquired with the WFC3 on board the HST, we…

Ages of extragalactic globular clusters can provide valuable insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies. In this contribution the photometric methods of age dating old globular cluster systems are summarised. The spectroscopic…

As first Paper of a series devoted to study the old stellar population in clusters and fields in the Small Magellanic Cloud, we present deep observations of NGC121 in the F555W and F814W filters, obtained with the Advanced Camera for…

The horizontal branch (HB) morphology of globular clusters (GC) is mainly governed by metallicity. The second parameter problem, well known since the 60's, states that metallicity alone is not enough to describe the observed HB morphology…

Globular cluster age estimates based on the absolute magnitude of the main sequence turn-off (\mvto) are generally considered to be the most reliable from a theoretical viewpoint. However, the difficulty in determining \mvto\ in observed…

We present spectroscopic ages, metallicities, and [alpha/Fe] ratios for 70 globular clusters in M31 that were derived from Lick line-index measurements. In addition to a population of old (>10 Gyr) globular clusters with a wide range of…

Field Horizontal branch (HB) stars can be used as tracers for the study of early stages of the evolution of our galaxy. Since the age of individual HB stars is not known a priori, we have studied the kinematics of a sample of field HB stars…

We report here initial but still strongly conclusive results on absolute ages of galactic globular clusters (GGCs). This study is based on high precision trigonometric parallaxes from the HIPPARCOS satellite coupled with accurate metal…

We present new BVI photometry for the halo globular cluster M5, and examine the B- and I-band luminosity functions (LFs), based on over 20,000 stars. We do not see evidence in the LF of a ``subgiant excess'' or of a discrepancy in the…

The globular cluster M79 was observed with the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT) during the Astro-1 space shuttle mission in 1990 December. The cluster's far-UV integrated spectrum shows strong absorption in the Lyman lines of atomic…

Globular clusters offer ideal laboratories to test the predictions of stellar evolution. When doing so with spectroscopic analyses during the 1990s, however, the parameters we derived for hot horizontal branch stars deviated systematically…

Integrated spectroscopy is the method of choice for deriving the ages of unresolved stellar systems. However, hot stellar evolutionary stages, such as hot horizontal branch stars and blue straggler stars (BSSs), can affect the integrated…

In a pioneering effort, Preston et al. reported that the colors of blue horizontal-branch (BHB) stars in the halo of the Galaxy shift with distance, from regions near the Galactic center to about 12 kpc away, and interpreted this as a…

We have used the WFPC2 camera on the Hubble Space Telescope to obtain photometry of the outer-halo globular clusters Palomar 3, Palomar 4, and Eridanus. These three are classic examples of the "second parameter" anomaly because of their red…

The expansion history of the Universe can be constrained in a cosmology-independent way by measuring the differential age evolution of cosmic chronometers. This yields a measurement of the Hubble parameter $H(z)$ as a function of redshift.…

The majority of the inhomogeneities in the chemical composition of Globular Cluster (GC) stars appear due to primordial enrichment by hot-CNO cycled material processed in stars belonging to a first stellar generation. Either massive AGB…

Accurately determining the age of H\,{ii} regions and the stars they host is as important as it is challenging. Historically the most popular method has been isochrone fitting to Hertzsprung-Russell Diagrams or Colour-Magnitude Diagrams.…

We are using full spectrum fitting to determine the ages and metallicities of Galactic clusters (M67 and globular clusters). We find that the method is very accurate to measure the metallicity. Blue horizontal branches are well identified…

Thanks to the outstanding capabilites of the HST, our current knowledge about the M31 globular clusters (GCs) is similar to our knowledge of the Milky Way GCs in the 1960s-1970s, which set the basis for studying the halo and galaxy…