Related papers: Massive Stellar Clusters in Interacting Galaxies
(abridged) The old Star Cluster (SC) systems surrounding any sofar investigated galaxy represent a powerful tool for the understanding of the cosmological evolution of their host galaxies. Phases of enhanced cluster formation can be…
The evolution of galaxies is driven strongly by dynamical processes including internal instabilities, tidal interactions and mergers. The cluster environment is a useful laboratory for studying these effects. I present recent results on…
Interacting galaxies often have complexes of hundreds of young stellar clusters of individual masses $\sim 10^{4-6}~M_\odot$ in regions that are a few hundred parsecs across. These cluster complexes interact dynamically, and their…
Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in Universe. They are very important as both cosmological probes and astrophysical laboratories. Several methods have been developed to detect galaxy clusters with different techniques (optical,…
The gap between first and second ranked galaxy magnitudes in groups is often considered a tracer of their merger histories, which in turn may affect galaxy properties, and also serves to test galaxy luminosity functions (LFs). We remeasure…
Some of the most massive globular clusters of our Milky Way, such as for example omega-Centauri, show a mixture of stellar populations spanning a few Gyr in age and 1.5 dex in metallicities. In contrast, standard formation scenarios predict…
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…
We examine the properties of embedded clusters within 1 kiloparsec using new data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, as well as recent results from 2MASS and other ground-based near-infrared surveys. We use surveys of entire molecular clouds…
There is accumulating evidence that the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function might be very different in different locations. The luminosity function might be rising in rich clusters and flat or declining in regions of low density. If…
Typical globular clusters (GCs - young and old) host stellar populations with little or no star-to-star variations in heavy elements (e.g., Ca, Fe) nor in age. Nuclear star clusters (NSCs), on the other hand, host complex stellar…
We present multiband photometric observations of three spiral galaxies selected in a sample suited for the study of young stellar groupings and their relationship with the parent galaxy and the galactic environment. Star forming regions…
We derive composite luminosity functions (LF) for galaxies in groups and examine the behaviour of the LF as a function of group luminosity (used as an indicator of group or halo mass). We consider both the entire galaxy population and split…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…
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…
Interacting galaxies are known to have higher global rates of star formation on average than normal galaxies, relative to their stellar masses. Using UV and IR photometry combined with new and published H-alpha images, we have compared the…
Studies during the last decade have revealed that nearly all Globular Clusters (GCs) host multiple populations (MPs) of stars with a distinctive chemical patterns in light elements. No evidence of such MPs has been found so far in…
Merging galaxy clusters allows to study the different mass components, dark and baryonic, separately. Also their occurrence enables to test the $\Lambda$CDM scenario and they could put constrains in the self interacting cross section of the…
The empirical laws of star formation suggest that galactic-scale gravity is involved, but they do not identify the actual triggering mechanisms for clusters in the final stages. Many other triggering processes satisfy the empirical laws…
We study the properties of the diffuse light in galaxy clusters forming in a large hydrodynamical cosmological simulation of the Lambda-CDM cosmology. The simulation includes a model for radiative cooling, star formation in dense cold gas,…
Young stellar clusters across nearly five orders of magnitude in mass appear to follow a power-law mass-radius relationship (MRR), $R_{\star} \propto M_{\star}^{\alpha}$, with $\alpha \approx 0.2 - 0.33$. We develop a simple analytic model…