Related papers: The Internal Dynamics of Globular Clusters
Star clusters are ideal tracers of star formation activity in systems outside the volume that can be studied using individual, resolved stars. These unresolved clusters span orders of magnitude in brightness and mass, and their formation is…
The dynamical evolution of globular clusters is theoretically described by a series of well known events typical of N-body systems. Still, the identification of observational signatures able to empirically describe the stage of dynamical…
Globular clusters are among the oldest structures in the Universe and they host today low-mass stars and no gas. However, there has been a time when they formed as gaseous objects hosting a large number of short-lived, massive stars. Many…
Galactic globular clusters are not simple stellar populations. And nothing is simple in their study, basically because we try to reconstruct chains of events that occurred at redshift z > 2-3 by observing these objects at z=0, after a…
We have used the ``dynamical clock'' to measure the level of dynamical evolution reached by three Galactic globular clusters (namely, NGC 3201, NGC 6316 and NGC 6440). This is an empirical method that quantifies the level of central…
The high-density environment of galaxy clusters is ripe for collisional encounters of galaxies. While the large velocity dispersion of clusters was originally thought to preclude slow encounters, the infall of smaller groups into the…
We investigate whether the dynamical status of clusters is related to the large-scale structure of the Universe. We find that cluster substructure is strongly correlated with the tendency of clusters to be aligned with their nearest…
We investigate the spatial, kinematic and chemical properties of globular cluster systems formed in merging and interacting galaxies using N-body/SPH simulations. Although we can not resolve individual clusters in our simulation, we assume…
Globular cluster ages are more than just lower limits to the age of the universe; the distribution of ages constraints the timescales for galaxy formation and chemical evolution. Globular cluster populations with different metallicities…
A model for the mass in and around the Local Group previously used to fit redshifts of dwarf galaxies to their distances between 50 kpc and 2.6 Mpc under the condition of small and growing primeval departures from homogeneity is shown to…
There is compelling observational evidence that globular clusters (GCs) are quite complex objects. A growing body of photometric results indicate that the evolutionary sequences are not simply isochrones in the observational plane -as…
Globular clusters (GCs) are some of the oldest bound structures in the Universe, holding clues to the earliest epochs of star formation and galaxy assembly. However, accurate age measurements of ancient clusters are challenging due to the…
High-mass stars are major players in the chemical and dynamical evolution of galaxies, and young massive clusters are the natural laboratories to study their evolution and their impact on star formation processes. Only in recent years have…
In this overview of the key properties of globular cluster (GC) systems I show that the GCs in elliptical and spiral host galaxies have more in common than previously thought. After contrasting these properties I briefly comment on GC…
Globular clusters (GCs) provide one way of determining when the most important periods of star formation in dwarf elliptical (dE) galaxies occurred. Thus, they are also useful for comparing the star formation histories of dwarf and giant…
A star cluster in a galactic nucleus sinks toward the galactic center due to dynamical friction. As it spirals inward, the cluster loses mass due to stellar evolution, relaxation driven evaporation, and tidal stripping, eventually…
The discovery of a large population of intra-cluster star clusters in the central region of the Hydra I and Centaurus galaxy clusters is presented. Based on deep VLT photometry (V,I), many star clusters have been identified not only around…
Understanding the formation of globular clusters will help us to constrain the evolutionary history of galaxies. For mergers on-going today, it appears that the number of newly created proto-globulars varies with the progenitor types and…
In the last decade we witness an advent of new types of dwarf stellar systems in cluding ultra-compact dwarfs, ultra-faint dwarf spheroidals, and exotic globular clusters, breaking the old simple paradigm for dwarf galaxies and globular…
In large scale structure formation, massive systems assemble through the hierarchical merging of less massive ones. Galaxy clusters, being the most massive and thus the most recent collapsed structures, still grow by accreting smaller…