Stars and Stellar Populations

NGC 1466 (Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA)

Current studies are focused on the structure and dynamics of globular clusters, the properties of their normal, "exotic" and multiple stellar populations, the characteristics of star systems in the Galactic Bulge, the formation and the enrichment history of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, the chemical composition of very metal-poor stars in the Milky Way, and the properties of red supergiant stars. The major science stream of the group is the project Cosmic-Lab, a long-term project which is aimed at using globular clusters as cosmic laboratories for Astrophysics, Dynamics and Fundamental Physics. The project was initiated with an ERC Advanced Grant of 1.9 million Euro funded within the Seventh Framework Programme “Ideas”, its main goal being to trace the internal dynamics of high-density systems by using the properties of "exotic stars" (blue stragglers, millisecond pulsars and intermediate-mass black holes). A recent funding of more than half a million Euros has been awarded by the Italian PRIN-MIUR to Light-on-Dark, a project aimed at determining the 3-dimensional kinematics of globular clusters from the radial velocity and the proper motion of thousand individual stars. All investigations are carried out by using a variety of space-based facilities (HST, ISO, Spitzer, GALEX, Chandra, UVIT) and ground-based telescopes (VLT, LBT, Keck, Gemini, Subaru, Magellan, NTT, TNG), and through numerical simulations and dynamical models.

Collaborations:

• INAF-OAS, ESO Garching,
• Liverpool University,
• UCLA, Universidad Concepcion (Chile),
• Indiana University (Bloomington, USA),
• Space Telescope Institute (Baltimore, USA),  
• Observatoire de Paris (France),
• NRAO (Charlottesville, USA),
• Max-Planck-Institute für Radioastronomie (Bonn, Germany)

Funding :

• UniBo,
• ERC,
• PRIN-INAF,
• PRIN-MIUR