Related papers: Future Opportunities for Globular Cluster Astronom…
Over the past several decades, advances in telescope/detector technologies and deep imaging techniques have pushed surface brightness limits to ever fainter levels. We can now both detect and measure the diffuse, extended star light that…
This paper reviews some recent work on the properties of the outer halos of galaxies. I particularly focus on recent and upcoming advances made with the study of globular clusters. Globular clusters can be observed out to ~100 kpc from the…
Globular clusters are compact, gravitationally bound systems of up to a million stars. The GCs in the Milky Way contain some of the oldest stars known, and provide important clues to the early formation and continuing evolution of our…
We present an overview of observational progress in the study of extragalactic globular cluster systems. Globular clusters turn out to be excellent tracers not only for the star-formation histories in galaxies, but also for kinematics at…
Studies of galaxy clusters have proved crucial in helping to establish the standard model of cosmology, with a universe dominated by dark matter and dark energy. A theoretical basis that describes clusters as massive, multi-component,…
The detection of brown dwarfs in globular star clusters will allow us to break the degeneracies in age, mass and composition that affect our current models, and therefore to constrain the physics of their atmospheres and interiors.…
Globular star clusters are extremely important astrophysical objects since (1) they are prime laboratories for testing stellar evolution; (2) they are ``fossils'' from the epoch of galaxy formation, and thus important cosmological tools;…
Since the first detection of intracluster planetary nebulae in 1996, imaging and spectroscopic surveys identified such stars to trace the radial extent and the kinematics of diffuse light in clusters. This topic of research is tightly…
The formation of globular clusters (GC), with their multiple stellar generations, is still an unsolved puzzle. Thus, interest is rising on the possibility to detect their precursors at high redshift, hence directly witnessing their…
Stellar halos around galaxies retain fundamental evidence of the processes which lead to their build up. Sophisticated models of galaxy formation in a cosmological context yield quantitative predictions about various observable…
I critically review a methodology of using clusters of galaxies as cosmological probes. The understanding of the abundances and spatial correlations of dark matter halos has been significantly advanced especially for a last few years.…
Foundations of standard theory of microlensing are described, namely we consider microlensing stars in Galactic bulge, the Magellanic Clouds or other nearby galaxies. We suppose that gravitational microlenses lie between an Earth observer…
We investigate the possibility of using globular clusters as targets for microlensing searches. Such searches will be challenging and require more powerful telescopes than now employed, but are feasible in the 0 future. Although expected…
Hubble's long, stable astrometric baseline creates a rare opportunity for discovery in the Local Group and beyond. Many nearby galaxies, streams, and star clusters already have archival first-epoch imaging in hand, so future HST…
We show that with a Next Generation Large Telescope one can detect the accelerated motions of ~100 stars orbiting the massive black hole at the Galactic center. The positions and velocities of these stars will be measured to astrometric and…
This chapter describes the prospects for detecting the first black holes in our Universe, with a specific focus on instruments/telescopes that will come online within the next decade, including e.g. the SKA, WFIRST, EUCLID, JWST, and large…
Nearly a century after the true nature of galaxies as distant "island universes" was established, their origin and evolution remain great unsolved problems of modern astrophysics. One of the most promising ways to investigate galaxy…
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), in its thirteen years of operation, has allowed us to observe properties of the universe humans have been able, until very recently, to probe only with their thoughts. This review presents a brief summary…
Results of precise measurements of the periods of pulsars discovered in the central regions of globular clusters are shown to be approaching the capabilities of testing the existence of a central black hole. For example, in the case of M 15…
The simulation of rich star clusters presents challenging problems of several kinds, including the design of suitable hardware and software, and numerous theoretical problems in stellar dynamics and stellar physics. Great progress has been…