Related papers: Internal Dynamics of Globular Clusters
The analysis of the presence of substructures in 16 well-sampled clusters of galaxies suggests a stimulating hypothesis: Clusters could be classified as unimodal or bimodal, on the basis of to the sub-clump distribution in the {\em 3-D}…
Rich clusters of galaxies, the largest virialized systems known, provide a powerful tool for the study of cosmology. Some of the fundamental questions that can be addressed with clusters of galaxies include: how did galaxies and large-scale…
Theories of how galaxies, the fundamental constituents of large-scale structure, form and evolve have undergone a dramatic paradigm shift in the last few decades. Earlier views were of rapid, early collapse and formation of basic…
Mergers of gas-rich galaxies lead to gravitationally driven increases in gas pressure that can trigger intense bursts of star and cluster formation. Although star formation itself is clustered, most newborn stellar aggregates are unbound…
This chapter presents an overview of the main observational results obtained to date about Blue Straggler Stars (BSSs) in Galactic Globular Clusters (GCs). The BSS specific frequency, radial distribution, chemical composition and rotational…
After a recall of fundamental concepts used in galactic dynamics, we review observational facts as well as results of orbit theory and numerical simulations which suggest long-term evolution of galaxies. Dynamical interactions between…
Reconstructing how all the stellar components of the Galaxy formed and assembled over time, by studying the properties of the stars which make it, is the aim of Galactic archeology. In these last years, thanks to the launch of the ESA Gaia…
We are learning much about how structure forms, in particular how clusters as nodes in the cosmic web evolve and accrete matter, and about the physical processes within these objects. In the next decade, the study of clusters will enable us…
A major paradigm shift has recently revolutionized our picture of globular clusters (GC) that were long thought to be simple systems of coeval stars born out of homogeneous material. Indeed, detailed abundance studies of GC long-lived…
Open clusters are the only example of single-age, single initial chemical composition populations in the Galaxy, and they play an important role in the study of the formation and evolution of the Galactic disk. In addition, they have been…
In hierarchical structure formation, the content of a galaxy is determined both by its in-situ processes and by material added via accretions. Globular clusters in particular represent a window for the study of the different merger events…
As ancient stellar systems, globular clusters (GCs) offer valuable insights into the dynamical histories of large galaxies. Previous studies of GC populations in the inner and outer regions of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) have revealed…
We review recent work that investigates the formation of stellar clusters, ranging in scale from globular clusters through open clusters to the small scale aggregates of stars observed in T associations. In all cases, recent advances in…
Galaxies are observed to obey a strict set of dynamical scaling relations. We review these relations for rotationally supported disk galaxies spanning many decades in mass, surface brightness, and gas content. The behavior of these widely…
Globular clusters were thought to be simple stellar populations, but recent photometric and spectroscopic evidence suggests that the clusters' early formation history was more complicated. In particular, clusters show star-to-star abundance…
We discuss the observational properties of a special class of objects (the so-called "Blue Straggler Stars", BSSs) in the framework of using this stellar population as probe of the dynamical processes occurring in high-density stellar…
The radial distribution of globular clusters in galaxies is always less peaked to the centre than the halo stars'. Extending previous work to a sample of HST globular cluster systems in ellipticals, we evaluate the number of clusters lost…
Globular clusters (GCs) are thought to be ancient relics from the early formative phase of galaxies, although their physical origin remains uncertain. GCs are most numerous around massive elliptical galaxies, where they can exhibit a broad…
We hypothesize that cosmic string loops are the seeds about which globular clusters accrete. Fixing the cosmic string tension by demanding that the peak in the distribution of masses of objects accreting onto string loops agrees with the…
The formation of stellar clusters dictates the pace at which galaxies evolve, and solving the question of their formation will undoubtedly lead to a better understanding of the Universe as a whole. While it is well known that star clusters…