Related papers: Galactic Open Clusters
The knowledge of stellar ages directly impacts the characterization of a planetary system as it puts strong constraints on the moment when the system was born. Unfortunately, the determination of precise stellar ages is a very difficult…
The Galactic disk retains a vast amount of information about how it came to be, and how it evolved over cosmic time. However, we know very little about the secular processes associated with disk evolution. One major uncertainty is the…
The age of an individual star cannot be measured, only estimated through mostly model-dependent or empirical methods, and no single method works well for a broad range of stellar types or for a full range in age. This review presents a…
Surveys of the local and distant Universe are the means to test and improve our models of galaxy formation. Substantial successes in the models are evident, while there is also considerable recent progress in identifying what remains to be…
We analyzed the shapes of Galactic open clusters by the star counting technique with the 2MASS star catalog database. Morphological parameters such as the ellipticity and size have been derived via stellar density distribution, weighed by…
The details of bulge formation via collapse, mergers, secular processes or their interplay remain unresolved. To start answering this question and quantify the importance of distinct mechanisms, we mapped a sample of three galactic bulges…
We investigate the properties and evolution of star particles in two simulations of isolated spiral galaxies, and two galaxies from cosmological simulations. Unlike previous numerical work, where typically each star particle represents one…
Populations of young star clusters show significant differences even among "normal" disk galaxies. In this contribution I discuss how properties of young cluster systems are related to those of their host galaxies, based on a recent study…
The galaxies of the Local Group that are currently forming stars can serve as our laboratories for understanding star formation and the evolution of massive stars. In this talk I will summarize what I think we've learned about these topics…
In the last decade we have come to realize that the traditional classification of stellar clusters into open and globular clusters cannot be easily extended beyond the realm of the Milky Way, and that even for our Galaxy it is not fully…
The last few years witnessed a change of perspective in the context of galaxy formation and evolution. The major role played by bars in the history of these fundamental building blocks of our universe was finally realized. However, and…
Stellar Populations are the fossil record of Galactic evolution. Interpretation of this record in the Local Group allows one to determine reliably the dominant physics controlling the evolution of those galaxies which are typical of the…
If we want to understand the evolution from star clusters to the Galactic field star population, the Solar neighbourhood is an ideal place to start. It contains objects from dense, very young clusters to old and almost dissolved moving…
Globular clusters are collisional systems, meaning that the stars inside them interact on timescales much shorter than the age of the Universe. These frequent interactions transfer energy between stars and set up observable trends that tell…
It appears that the dynamical status of clusters and groups of galaxies is related to the large-scale structure of the Universe. A few interesting trends have been established: (1) The Cluster Substructure - Alignment Connection, by which…
Clusters of galaxies are the most recently assembled, massive, bound structures in the Universe. As predicted by General Relativity, given their masses, clusters strongly deform space-time in their vicinity. Clusters act as some of the most…
The origin of the chemical anomalies in star clusters is still an open question, although much effort has been employed both from a theoretical and observational point of view. The exploration of whether such multiple stellar populations…
The stellar astronomy has always been considered the fundamental source of knowledge about the basic building blocks of the universe - the stars. It has proved correctness of many physical theories - like e.g. the idea of nuclear fusion in…
There is compelling observational evidence that globular clusters (GCs) are quite complex objects. A growing body of photometric results indicate that the evolutionary sequences are not simply isochrones in the observational plane -as…
We review the formation and evolution of fossil groups and clusters from both the theoretical and the observational points of view. In the optical band, these systems are dominated by the light of the central galaxy. They were interpreted…