Authors
Dr.
Santi Cassisi
Date and time
14 Dec 2021 - 11:30 Europe/London
Address
Aula
Talk language
English
Serie number
1
Description
Galactic globular clusters have always been at the crossroad of several investigations
in both Stellar and Galactic Astrophysics. For long time, they have been considered
the prototypes of Simple Stellar Populations, and hence used for testing and calibrating
stellar evolutionary models as well as population synthesis tools. Nowadays, after the
discovery of the presence of multiple stellar populations in almost all Galactic GCs, we know
that this assumption is no longer valid. The process(es) of formation and early evolution
of these star clusters is (are) very far to be understood, and any scenario so far envisaged is
severely challenged by the pletora of empirical evidence collected till now. In the same time,
thanks to the availability of an impressive observational framework - collected by combining
kinematic measurements from Gaia mission, with data provided by large spectroscopic and
photometric surveys -, GCs are playing a crucial role for our understanding of the
assembly history of the Milky Way.
We will review our present knowledge about these important stellar systems, discussing the
several, open issues related to their formation/evolution, and discuss how we can use them
in our effort to depict the Milky Way assembly history.