Related papers: The heavy elements mixture and the stellar cluster…
Clusters of galaxies allow a direct estimate of the metallicity and metal production yield on the largest scale so far. The ratio of the total iron mass in the ICM to the total optical luminosity of the cluster (the iron…
We report on the first high-resolution spectroscopy of 10 giants in LMC Globular Clusters in a wide age range, obtained with the newly commissioned spectrograph UVES at VLT UT2. These observations are used to derive oxygen and iron content…
Star-to-star light-element abundance variations, know as multiple stellar populations (MPs), are common in almost all Galactic globular clusters. Recently, MPs have also been detected in a number of massive clusters with ages in excess of 2…
We present results of age determination based on the standard procedure of isochrone fitting for about 600 star clusters younger than about 1.2 Gyr from the central parts of the LMC. Comparison of age distributions of star clusters from the…
We present updated stellar population models appropriate for old ages (>1 Gyr) and covering a wide range in metallicities (-1.5<[Fe/H]<0.3). These models predict the full spectral variation associated with individual element abundance…
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 Hyades, Praesepe, and Pleiades are well studied stellar clusters that anchor important secondary stellar age indicators. Recent studies have shown that main sequence turn off-based ages for these clusters may depend on the degree of…
Differences in chemical composition among main sequence stars within a given cluster are probably due to differences in their masses and other effects such as radiative diffusion, magnetic field, rotation, mixing mechanisms, mass loss,…
We present an unbiased method for evaluating the ranges of ages and metallicities which are allowed by the photometric properties of the stellar populations that dominate the light of early-type galaxies in clusters. The method is based on…
In the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), there have been very few clusters observed with ages between 4 and 11 Gyr. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the `LMC age gap'. We constructed a model of the cluster age distribution aimed at…
The mass at which a transition is made between stars that have radiative or convective cores throughout the core H-burning phase is a fairly sensitive function of Z (particularly the CNO abundances). As a consequence, the ~4 Gyr, open…
We present a new technique to determine age and metallicity of old stellar populations (globular clusters and elliptical galaxies) using an iterative principal component analysis on narrow band (Str\"omgren) colors. Our technique is capable…
We address the issue about the variation of the star cluster frequency (CF) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in terms of the cluster spatial distribution. We adopted the LMC regions traced by Harris & Zaritsky (2009) and used an updated…
We present Hubble Space Telescope ACS deep photometry of the intermediate-age globular cluster NGC 1783 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. By using this photometric dataset, we have determined the degree of ellipticity of the cluster…
Stellar ages are an important parameter to study the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. In recent years, several studies have established the existence of a relationship between chemical clocks and stellar ages. The [Y/Mg] clock is a…
Three independent sets of stellar theoretical models are tested with well-detached systems of the Hyades open cluster: 51 Tau, V818 Tau, and $\theta^2$ Tau. The choice of these objects is discussed and a statistical method is described and…
Hipparcos data has allowed the identification of a large number of clump stars in the Solar Neighbourhood. We discuss our present knowledge about their distributions of masses, ages, colours, magnitudes, and metallicities. We point out that…
We have developed an homogeneous evolutionary scenario for H- and He-burning low-mass stars by computing updated stellar models for a wide metallicity and age range (0.0002$\le Z \le$0.004 and 9$\le t(Gyr) \le$15, respectively) suitable to…
The evolution of star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds has been the subject of significant recent controversy, particularly regarding the importance and length of the earliest, largely mass-independent disruption phase (referred to as…
Most star clusters at an intermediate age (1-2 Gyr) in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds show a puzzling feature in their color-magnitude diagrams (CMD) that is not in agreement with a simple stellar population. The main sequence…