Related papers: Stellar population in Active Galactic Nuclei. I. T…
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…
Our Galactic Center hosts over 10% of the known massive stars in the Galaxy. The majority of these stars are located in three particularly massive clusters that formed within the past 5 Myr. While these clusters are extraordinary, their…
The role of stars and starbursts in AGN has been a recurring issue for nearly as long as AGN have been recognized as hosts of interesting phenomena. The heated ``starburst X monster'' controversy of the 80's and 90's was gradually replaced…
Gravitational instability in the outskirts of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) disks lead to disk fragmentation and formation of super-massive (several 10^2Msun) stars with potentially long lifetimes. Alternatively, stars can be captured…
We present some preliminary results from an on-going study of the evolution of stellar populations in rich clusters of galaxies. This sample contains core line-strength measurements from 183 galaxies with b_J <= 19.5 from four clusters with…
We have measured the strengths of Ca II Triplet and Mgb stellar absorption lines in the nuclear and off-nuclear spectra of Seyfert galaxies. These features are diluted to varying degrees by continuum emission from the active nucleus and…
(Abridged) As part of an ongoing effort to study the stellar nuclei of very late-type, bulge-less spirals, we present results from a high-resolution spectroscopic survey of nine such nuclear star clusters, undertaken with VLT/UVES. We fit…
The efficient use of near-IR data in studies of external stellar populations depends on our ability to recognize the nature of the predominant sources of light, and to interprete these findings in terms of age and metallicity. Here we focus…
We take a closer look at our published results of determination of ages, metallicities, helium mass fractions and abundances of chemical elements in Galactic globular clusters in order to find possible signatures of the phenomenon of…
Most Galactic Globular Clusters (GCs) harbour multiple populations of stars (MPs), composed of at least two generations: the first characterized by a "standard" $\alpha$-enhanced metal mixture, as observed in field halo stars of the Milky…
We have developed an analytical method to investigate the stellar populations in a galaxy using the broad-band colours. The method enables us to determine the relative contribution, spatial distribution and age for different stellar…
We have acquired intermediate resolution spectra in the 3700-7000 A wavelength range for a sample of 65 early-type galaxies predominantly located in low density environments, a large fraction of which show emission lines. The spectral…
We are coming to believe that stellar populations in globular clusters are not as simple as they were once thought to be. A growing amount of photometric and spectroscopic evidence shows that globular clusters host at least two different…
The majority of spiral and elliptical galaxies in the Universe host very dense and compact stellar systems at their centres known as nuclear star clusters (NSCs). In this work we study the stellar populations and star formation histories…
We report R~3000 VLT ISAAC K-band spectroscopy of the nuclei (i.e. central 100-300pc) of 9 galaxies hosting an active galactic nucleus. For 5 of these we also present spectra of the circumnuclear region out to 1kpc. We have measured a…
Nuclear star clusters are found at the centers of most galaxies. They are the densest stellar systems in the Universe, and thus have unique and interesting stellar dynamics. We review how common nuclear star clusters are in galaxies of…
This chapter summarizes our current understanding of the stellar population properties of bulges and outlines important future research directions.
The star formation, mass assembly and chemical enrichment histories of galaxies, and their present distributions of dark matter, remain encoded in their stellar populations. Distinguishing the actual distribution functions of stellar age,…
Ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) have several types according to dominance of starburst or AGN component. We made stellar population analysis for a sample of 160 ULIRGs to study the evolution of ULIRGs. We found that the dominance…
Colours of spiral galaxies generally are affected by the underlying old stellar population, younger stars, and extinction by dust. Old and young populations generally can be disentangled using a combination of blue and near-infrared…