Related papers: A Robust Method for the Analysis of Integrated Spe…
We have determined spectroscopic ages of elliptical galaxies in the Virgo cluster using spectra of very high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N/A > 100). We observed 8 galaxies with the Subaru Telescope and have combined this sample with 6 galaxies…
Integrated light (IL) spectroscopy enables studies of stellar populations beyond the Milky Way and its nearest satellites. In this paper, I will review how IL spectroscopy reveals essential information about globular clusters and the…
In the era of large high-resolution spectroscopic surveys, high-quality spectra can contribute to our understanding of the Galactic chemical evolution, providing chemical abundances belonging to the different nucleosynthesis channels, and…
We introduce a new method to determine the relative contributions of different types of stars to the integrated light of nearby early-type galaxies. As is well known, the surface brightness of these galaxies shows pixel-to-pixel…
The influence of environment on the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies is, as yet, an unresolved issue. Constraints can be placed on models of early-type galaxy formation and evolution by examining their stellar populations as a…
Single-star stellar population (ssSSP) models are usually used for stellar population studies. However, more than 50% of stars are in binaries and evolve differently from single stars. This suggests that the effects of binary interactions…
The finding of multiple stellar populations (MP), defined by patterns in the stellar element abundances, is nowadays considered a distinctive feature of globular clusters. However, while data availability and quality improved in last…
We present in this study flux-calibrated integrated spectra in the range 3600-6800A for 18 concentrated SMC clusters. Cluster reddening values were estimated by interpolation between the extinction maps of Burstein & Heiles (1982, AJ, 87,…
With the aim of building a data-set of spectral properties of well studied early-type galaxies showing emission lines, we present intermediate resolution spectra of 50 galaxies in the nearby Universe. The sample, which covers several of the…
We derive new spectral H_gamma index definitions which are robust age indicators for old and relatively old stellar populations and thus have great potential for solving the age-metallicity degeneracy of galaxy spectra. To study H_gamma as…
The SDSS-III/APOGEE survey operated from 2011-2014 using the APOGEE spectrograph, which collects high-resolution (R~22,500), near-IR (1.51-1.70 microns) spectra with a multiplexing (300 fiber-fed objects) capability. We describe the survey…
Stellar population synthesis (SPS) models are a key tool for deriving the age, metallicity, radial velocity and reddening of star clusters from their integrated spectra. Using a sample of 129 star clusters with high-quality spectra, we…
The Internal Linear Combination (ILC) method has been extensively used to extract the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy map from foreground contaminated multi-frequency maps. However, the performance of simple ILC is limited and…
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…
It is widely accepted that individual Galactic globular clusters harbor two coeval generations of stars, the first one born with the `standard' alpha-enhanced metal mixture observed in field Halo objects, the second one characterized by an…
Globular clusters (GCs) exhibit varying degrees of flattening (ellipticity), which may provide insight into their internal dynamics and evolution histories. Commonly used methods to measure ellipticity, such as ellipse fitting of density…
Spectra from MDM Observatory are used to assess Lick/IDS feature strength gradients inside the half-light radius of the compact Local Group elliptical galaxy M32. All but a few (of 24 measured) indices show a statistically significant…
Large spectroscopic surveys aim to consistently compute stellar parameters of very diverse stars while minimizing systematic errors. We explore the use of stellar clusters as benchmarks to verify the precision of spectroscopic parameters in…
(Abridged) We study the stellar populations of 14 elliptical galaxies in the Virgo cluster. We propose an alternative approach to the standard side-band method to measure equivalent widths (EWs). Our Boosted Median Continuum maps the EWs…
Globular Clusters (GCs) in the Milky Way are the primary laboratories for establishing the ages of the oldest stellar populations and for measuring the color-magnitude relation of stars. In infrared (IR) color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), the…