Related papers: An Internal Second Parameter Problem in the Sculpt…
We present abundances for seven stars in the (extremely) low-metallicity tail of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy, from spectra taken with X-shooter on the ESO VLT. Targets were selected from the Ca II triplet (CaT) survey of the Dwarf…
We report the results of a deep Chandra survey of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy. We find five X-ray sources with $L_X$ of at least $6\times10^{33}$ ergs/sec with optical counterparts establishing them as members of Sculptor. These…
Aims. J, H, and K' images obtained from the near-infrared imager CFHTIR on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope are used to derive the morphological parameters of the red giant branch (RGB) in the near-infrared color-magnitude diagrams for 12…
We present the deep and wide $V$ and $I_c$ photometry of the Sextans dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) taken by Suprime-Cam imager on the Subaru Telescope, which extends out to the tidal radius. The colour-magnitude diagram (CMD) reaches two…
The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters is providing a major breakthrough in our knowledge of Globular Clusters (GCs) and their stellar populations. Among the main results, we discovered that all the…
Analysis of cluster and field star uvby data demonstrates the existence of a previously undetected discrepancy in a widely used photometric metallicity calibration for G dwarfs. The discrepancy is systematic and strongly color-dependent,…
The formation of "stellar halos" in dwarf galaxies have been discussed in terms of early mergers or Galactic tides, although fluctuations in the gravitational potential due to stellar feedback is also a possible candidate mechanism. A…
The study of the chemical abundances of metal-poor stars in dwarf galaxies provides a venue to constrain paradigms of chemical enrichment and galaxy formation. Here we present metallicity and carbon abundance measurements of 100 stars in…
High resolution (R$\sim$22,500) spectra for 400 red clump giants, in four fields within $\rm -4.8^{\circ} \lesssim b \lesssim -3.4^{\circ}$ and $\rm -10^{\circ} \lesssim l \lesssim +10^{\circ}$, were obtained within the GIRAFFE Inner Bulge…
We have tested the reliability of the red giant branch (RGB) as a metallicity indicator accounting for observational errors as well as the complexity of star formation histories (SFHs) and chemical evolution histories observed in various…
New HST/WFPC2 imaging of the dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 625 is presented. These data, 80% complete to V and I magnitudes of 26.0 and 25.3, respectively, allow us to study the recent star formation history of NGC 625. We derive a tip of the…
The Red-Giant Branch Bump (RGBB) is one of the most noteworthy features in the red-giant luminosity function of stellar clusters. It is caused by the passage of the hydrogen-burning shell through the composition discontinuity left at the…
We have used ESO telescopes at La Silla and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in order to obtain accurate B,V,I CCD photometry for the stars located within 200" (~= 2 half-mass radii, r_h = 1.71') from the center of the cluster NGC 6101.…
We schematically review some of the main steps in the study of the Horizontal Branch Morphology in Galactic Globular Clusters. Since the first realization of the existence of the so-called Second Parameter Problem (2nd-P) up to now, one…
We analyze the angular momentum evolution from the red giant branch (RGB) to the horizontal branch (HB) and along the HB. Using rotation velocities for stars in the globular cluster M13, we find that the required angular momentum for the…
Globular Cluster (GC) systems of most early-type galaxies show bimodal optical color distributions, yet their Luminosity Functions (LFs) look like simple Gaussians with turn-over magnitudes used for determination of distances and the Hubble…
Current cosmological models indicate that the Milky Way's stellar halo was assembled from many smaller systems. Based on the apparent absence of the most metal-poor stars in present-day dwarf galaxies, recent studies claimed that the true…
The location of Galactic Globular Clusters' (GC) stars on the horizontal branch (HB) should mainly depend on GC metallicity, the "first parameter", but it is actually the result of complex interactions between the red giant branch (RGB)…
(Abriged)This work studies in more detail the stellar population, including its photometric properties and characteristics, in the rarely studied southern Galactic globular cluster NGC 1261. We focus on the brighter sequences of the…
Asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in the globular cluster NGC6752 have been found to exhibit some chemical peculiarities with respect to the red giant branch (RGB) stars. A discrepancy between [FeI/H] and [FeII/H] (not observed in RGB…