Related papers: Super Star Clusters in M82
The formation environment of stars in massive stellar clusters is similar to the environment of stars forming in galaxies at a redshift of 1 - 3, at the peak star formation rate density of the Universe. As massive clusters are still forming…
Stellar clusters are born in cold and dusty molecular clouds and the youngest clusters are embedded to various degrees in dusty dark molecular material. Such embedded clusters can be considered protocluster systems. The most deeply buried…
The centre of our Galaxy is one of the most studied and yet enigmatic places in the Universe. At a distance of about 8 kpc from our Sun, the Galactic centre (GC) is the ideal environment to study the extreme processes that take place in the…
How Very Young Massive star Clusters (VYMCs; also known as "starburst" clusters), which typically are of $\gtrsim 10^4M_\odot$ and are a few Myr old, form out of Giant Molecular Clouds is still largely an open question. Increasingly…
We study the shape and evolution of the star formation main sequence in three independently developed semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. We focus, in particular, on the characterization of the model galaxies that are significantly…
We present first results from an HST/ACS imaging survey of stars and star clusters in five nearby spiral galaxies. This contribution concentrates on NGC 1313, a highly distorted late-type barred spiral. We compare the field star and cluster…
Young massive stars or clusters are often observed at the peripheries of HII regions. What triggers star formation at such locations? Among the scenarios that have been proposed, the `collect and collapse' process is particularly attractive…
Most star complexes are in fact complexes of stars, clusters and gas clouds; term "star complexes" was introduced as general one disregarding the preferential content of a complex. Generally the high rate of star formation in a complex is…
We present a detailed study of the star cluster population detected in the galaxy NGC922, one of the closest collisional ring galaxies known to date, using HST/WFPC2 UBVI photometry, population synthesis models, and N-body/SPH…
Star clusters are ideal tracers of star formation activity in systems outside the volume that can be studied using individual, resolved stars. These unresolved clusters span orders of magnitude in brightness and mass, and their formation is…
The nature of the starburst phenomenon in galaxies is investigated using a narrow band color system designed to study color evolution in distant clusters. Work on zero redshift, luminous far-IR galaxies, calibrated by starburst models,…
We present HST/STIS optical and Gemini/NIFS near-IR IFU spectroscopy, and archival HST imaging of the triplet of super star clusters (A1, A2 and A3) in the core of the M82 starburst. Using model fits to the STIS spectra, and the weakness of…
The most prodigious starburst galaxies are absent in massive galaxy clusters today, but their connection with large scale environments is less clear at $z\gtrsim2$. We present a search of large scale structure around a galaxy cluster core…
We present preliminary results of the application of a new sophisticated code which allows high precision integration of orbits of stars belonging to a dense stellar system moving in the vicinity of a massive black hole. This mimics the…
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…
Close encounters and physical collisions between stars in young dense clusters may lead to the formation of very massive stars and black holes via runaway merging. We examine critically some details of this process, using N-body simulations…
It is often assumed that the strong gravitational field of a super-massive black hole disrupts an adjacent molecular cloud preventing classical star formation in the deep potential well of the black hole. Yet, young stars have been observed…
The huge star formation events that occur at some galactic centers do not provide enough clues as to their origin, since the morphological signatures of the triggering mechanism are smeared out in the timescale of a few orbital revolutions…
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…
Globular clusters contain many stars with surface abundance patterns indicating contributions from hydrogen burning products, as seen in the anti-correlated elemental abundances of e.g. sodium and oxygen, and magnesium and aluminium.…