Star Clusters Research Group

Star Clusters Research Group conducts research in collaboration with renowned international astrophysics research centers and universities. It aims to answer some of the most challenging questions in the field by analyzing spectroscopic observations of star clusters.

Star clusters are groups of stars gravitationally bound together, formed from the same interstellar cloud. They are key observational tools for understanding stellar astrophysics. For example, determining the star clusters' abundances of elements resulting from different nucleosynthetic processes such as Type I supernovae (producing Fe-peak elements, for instance Sc, V, Cr, Mn , Fe, Co, and Ni), winds from evolved stars, core-collapse supernovae (producing α-elements: O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca, and Ti), can provide us with information about these complex mechanisms. Detailed chemical abundances of stellar populations are also used to uncover information about the chemical enrichment history of the host galaxy.

Knowing the chemical composition of star clusters is also crucial in understanding their own formation and evolution, especially with the discovery of the multiple stellar populations (MSP) phenomenon defined as star-to-star variations in the inferred abundances of light elements (He, C, N, O, Na, Al). The discovery of MSPs in stellar clusters continues to challenge our view of star clusters as being simple stellar populations. This phenomenon is one of the most puzzling ones in the field of star clusters and it is still not well understood.