Related papers: Aluminum Abundances on the Red Giant Branch: Testi…
Most Globular Clusters (GC) show chemical inhomogeneities in the composition of their stars, apparently due to a second stellar generation (SG) in which the forming gas is enriched by hot-CNO cycled material processed in stars belonging to…
Asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars play a key role in the enrichment of galaxies with heavy elements. Due to their large amplitude variability, the measurement of elemental abundances is a highly challenging task that has not been solved…
We study the formation of multiple populations in globular clusters (GC), under the hypothesis that stars in the second generation formed from the winds of intermediate-mass stars, ejected during the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase,…
The "second-parameter effect" is characterized by the existence of globular clusters (GCs) with similar metallicity [Fe/H] (the "first parameter") but different horizontal-branch (HB) morphologies. One of the primary second-parameter…
We present high quality near infrared Color Magnitude Diagrams of 10 Galactic Globular Clusters (GCs) spanning a wide metallicity range (-2.15<[Fe/H]<-0.2). This homogeneous data-base has been used to perform a detailed analysis of the Red…
We present abundances of several light, alpha, Fe-peak, and neutron-capture elements for 66 red giant branch (RGB) stars in the Galactic globular cluster Omega Centauri. Our observations lie in the range 12.0<V<13.5 and focus on the…
We present BV photometry of the Sculptor dwarf galaxy to V=22. These data give evidence for a bimodality in Sculptor's metallicity distribution based on a discontinuity in the luminosities of horizontal branch (HB) stars and by the presence…
We present wide field near-infrared photometry of 12 Galactic globular clusters, typically extending from the tip of the cluster red giant branch (RGB) to the main sequence turnoff. Using recent homogenous values of cluster distance,…
Thermohaline mixing has recently been proposed to occur in low-mass red giants, with large consequence for the chemical yields of low-mass stars. We investigate the role of thermohaline mixing during the evolution of stars between 1Msun and…
We provide a high dispersion line-by-line abundance analysis of five red HB stars in the extremely metal rich galactic globular cluster NGC 6553. These red HB stars are significantly hotter than the very cool stars near the tip of the giant…
Galactic globular clusters (GCs) are known to host multiple stellar populations: a first generation with a chemical pattern typical of halo field stars and a second generation (SG) enriched in Na and Al and depleted in O and Mg. Both…
In this research we use a large sample of field metal-poor stars ([Fe/H]<-1) in different evolutionary phases to prove observationally that (small mass) subgiants (stars brighter than the first dredge-up and fainter than the RGB bump) have…
This paper presents the chemical abundance analysis of 217 stars in the metal-poor globular cluster NGC 6752, distributed from the turn-off to the lower red giant branch. Aluminium and Lithium abundances were derived through spectral…
Numerous spectroscopic observations provide compelling evidence for a non-canonical mixing process that modifies the surface abundances of Li, C and N of low-mass red giants when they reach the bump in the luminosity function. Eggleton et…
We report new HST/WFPC2 photometry for 10 globular clusters (GC) in M31 observed in F5555W(V) and F814W(I). Additionally we have reanalyzed HST archival data of comparable quality for 2 more GCs. Extraordinary care is taken to account for…
We measure the red giant branch bump (RGBB) of the Galactic bulge, the most metal-rich RGBB ever detected. The RGBB luminosity functions peaks at the expected brightness, but its number density is very low relative to Galactic globular…
We present wide field JHKs photometry of 16 Galactic globular clusters located towards the Galactic bulge, calibrated on the 2MASS photometric system. Differential reddening corrections and statistical field star decontamination are…
Low mass stars (< 2-2.5 M_sun) exhibit, at all the stages of their evolution, signatures of processes that require challenging modeling beyond the standard stellar theory. In this paper we focus on their peculiarities while they climb the…
The determinations of element abundances in red-giant stars and in particular in AGB stars are reviewed and the resulting abundances are compared with those obtained for planetary nebulae in the Galaxy and in nearby galaxies. The problems,…
In this paper, we present a detailed high-resolution spectroscopic study of post main sequence stars in the Globular Cluster M68. Our sample, which covers a range of 4000 K in $T_{eff}$, and 3.5 dex in $log(g)$, is comprised of members from…