Related papers: Old Open Clusters as Tracers of Galactic Evolution
The Galactic population of open clusters provides an insight into star formation in the Galaxy. The open cluster catalogue by Dias et al.(2002b) is a rich source of data, including kinematic information. This large sample made it possible…
The study of open cluster metallicities helps to understand the local stellar formation and evolution throughout the Milky Way. Its metallicity gradient is an important tracer for the Galactic formation in a global sense. Because open…
Evolutionary synthesis models for star clusters of various metallicities including gaseous emission during the lifetime of the ionising stars are used to model star cluster systems comprising two populations: an old metal-poor globular…
Globular clusters are stellar dynamical systems which evolve on stellar evolutionary and both internal and external dynamical timescales. Quantitative comparison of cluster properties with realistic evolutionary dynamical models is becoming…
A comparison is made between the age-metallicity relation obtained from four different types of studies: F and G stars in the Solar Neighbourhood, analysis of open clusters, galactic structure studies with the stellar population synthesis…
Various cosmological applications of galaxy clusters are presented. Clusters are used to determine the baryon fraction, dark matter distribution and the matter density of the universe. They also contain a wealth of information about…
Old, metal-poor globular clusters trace the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies. Their are the best probes, at low redshift, of the building-up of galaxy halos at high redshift. Their properties constrain the characteristics of…
Globular clusters are valuable fossil records of the formation and evolution of their host galaxies. The color distribution of elliptical galaxy globular cluster systems indicates an episodic formation history, consistent with a merger…
In this paper, we are exploring the properties of old, metal-poor globular clusters in galaxies. We investigate whether their properties are related to the properties of their host galaxies, and whether we can constrain their formation. The…
Globular star clusters are extremely important astrophysical objects since (1) they are prime laboratories for testing stellar evolution; (2) they are ``fossils'' from the epoch of galaxy formation, and thus important cosmological tools;…
Based on published data, we have compiled a catalogue of fundamental astrophysical parameters for 593 open clusters of the Galaxy. In particular, the catalogue provides the Galactic orbital elements for 500 clusters, the masses, central…
Open clusters potentially provide an ideal environment for the search for transiting extrasolar planets since they feature a relatively large number of stars of the same known age and metallicity at the same distance. With this motivation,…
Globular clusters (GCs), the oldest stellar systems observed in the Milky Way, have for long been considered single stellar populations. As such, they provided an ideal laboratory to understand stellar dynamics and primordial star formation…
Radial migration is an important process in the Galactic disk. A few open clusters show some evidence on this mechanism but there is no systematic study. In this work, we investigate the role of radial migration on the Galactic disk based…
Metallicity is one of four free parameters typically considered when fitting isochrones to the cluster sequence. Unfortunately, this parameter is often ignored or assumed to be solar in most papers. Hence an unknown bias is introduced in…
Classical Cepheids in open clusters are key ingredients for stellar population studies and the characterization of variable stars, as they are tracers of young and massive populations and of recent star formation episodes. Cluster Cepheids…
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…
We have begun a survey of the chemical and dynamical properties of the Milky Way disk as traced by open star clusters. In this first contribution, the general goals of our survey are outlined and the strengths and limitations of using star…
Stars in open clusters are powerful probes of the intervening Galactic magnetic field, via background starlight polarimetry, because they provide constraints on the magnetic field distances. We use 2MASS photometric data for a sample of 31…
We discuss recent developments on the age and metallicity distribution for early type galaxies in different environments.