Galactic astrophysics

Researchers
  • Jordanka Borissova: Variable stars in star clusters, stellar evolution.
  • Radostin Kurtev: Stellar populations, brown dwarfs, infrared astronomy.
Areas of Research
The Milky Way and its environment provide a unique place to test theories of galaxy formation and small-scale predictions of cosmology models. Moreover, our location within our own Galaxy gives us a perspective from which we can study the stellar populations, in particular stellar clusters, in great detail, and such studies have important implications for our understanding of the formation of distant galaxies in general. For future investigations of extragalactic star clusters with the next generation satellites and telescopes like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, we need to create the templates of well-investigated, benchmark star clusters in our Galaxy. Thus, today there is an exceptional revival of the research field on star clusters, following new observational results obtained in particular from several infrared surveys such as 2MASS; GLIMPSE; WISE; VVV and VVVX; UKIDSS GPS. Significant progress has been made in the investigation of the Galactic star cluster population, which has added to the traditional catalogs of optically visible clusters, http://www.astro.iag.usp.br/ocdb/ and Webda, http://www.univie.ac.at/webda/ not only new optically visible clusters (Milky Way global survey of Star Clusters MWSC database), but also many newly discovered star clusters visible only in the infrared (hereafter IR cluster), thus reaching more than 4000 cataloged clusters. A complete census of young Galactic star clusters is necessary to constrain theoretical models of star-cluster formation. The new cluster survey will fill in the missing parameter space (clusters in the mass range 103–104 Solar masses) and help determine if such relations are fundamental. As a final product, we will provide a multivariate dataset for the study of star-cluster assembly and evolution across various Galactic environments. A sub-arcsecond astrometry (e.g., VVVX) will also enable reliable kinematic selection of members in optically obscured clusters that Gaia cannot see. Cross-correlation between the VVVX and various available X-ray datasets (e.g., the Chandra MYStIX fields) will improve the membership classification of X-ray sources. As active VVVX team members, we have the privilege of being the first to exploit the survey data. Thus, we plan to further investigate the population of the Milky Way star clusters by extending the current sample toward the area covered by VVVX.
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