Related papers: Future Opportunities for Globular Cluster Astronom…
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…
A galaxy's orientation is one of its most basic observable properties. Astronomers once assumed that galaxies are randomly oriented in space, however it is now clear that some have preferred orientations with respect to their surroundings.…
The high spatial resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has led to tremendous progress in many areas of astronomy. The ability of the HST to peer into the bright inner regions of galaxies and distinguish between globular clusters…
Establishing or ruling out, either through solid mass measurements or upper limits, the presence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) at the centers of star clusters would profoundly impact our understanding of problems ranging from the…
A sub-sampled deconvolution technique for crowded field photometry with the HST WFPC2 instrument was proposed by Butler (2000) and applied to search for optical counterparts to pulsars in globular clusters (Golden et al. 2001). Simulations…
The dark matter distribution of the Milky Way remains among the major unsolved problems about our home galaxy. The masses of other spiral galaxies can be determined from their rotation curves through long-slit spectroscopy. But for the…
The modern study of the dynamics of stellar systems requires the use of high-performance computers. Indeed, an accurate modelization of the structure and evolution of self-gravitating systems like planetary systems, open clusters, globular…
Globular clusters are stellar dynamical systems which evolve on stellar evolutionary and both internal and external dynamical timescales. Quantitative comparison of cluster properties with realistic evolutionary dynamical models is becoming…
The properties of old globular cluster systems (GCSs) in galaxy halos offer unique insight into the physical processes that conspire to form any generic star cluster, at any epoch. Presented here is a summary of the information obtained…
Extensive photometric studies of the globular clusters located towards the center of the Milky Way have been historically neglected. The presence of patchy differential reddening in front of these clusters has proven to be a significant…
This review focuses on how galaxies and their globular cluster systems form. I first discuss the now fairly convincing evidence that some globular clusters form in galaxy starbursts/mergers. One way these observations are valuable is they…
Clusters of galaxies at high redshift (z>1) are vitally important to understand the evolution of the large scale structure of the Universe, the processes shaping galaxy populations and the cycle of the cosmic baryons, and to constrain…
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…
Wide-angle surveys have been an engine for new discoveries throughout the modern history of astronomy, and have been among the most highly cited and scientifically productive observing facilities in recent years. This trend is likely to…
The formation of globular clusters (GCs) remains one of the main unsolved problems in star and galaxy formation. The past decades have seen important progress in constraining the physics of GC formation from a variety of directions. In this…
Galactic globular clusters are not simple stellar populations. And nothing is simple in their study, basically because we try to reconstruct chains of events that occurred at redshift z > 2-3 by observing these objects at z=0, after a…
Four ongoing microlensing experiments have produced important new results but also big puzzles, the major one being that the expected classes of lenses cannot account for the observed distribution of time scales. I discuss future…
Looking ahead to the next decade and imagining the landscape of astronomy in 2020, it is clear that astronomical surveys, large and small, plus extensive follow-up projects, will be a great engine of progress in our profession. Surveys have…
A high optical depth to gravitational microlensing towards the galactic bulge is consistent with current models of the galactic bar. The low optical depth towards the LMC can probably be accounted for by the ordinary stars in our galaxy and…
Numerical simulations of star cluster formation have advanced greatly during the past decade, covering increasingly massive gas clouds while accounting for more and more complex physics. In this review, I discuss the present state of the…