Conveners
Stelle, Popolazioni Stellari e Mezzo Interstellare
- Marcella Marconi (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))
Stelle, Popolazioni Stellari e Mezzo Interstellare
- Marcella Marconi (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))
At INAF the research in the field of “Stars, stellar populations and interstellar medium” is included in the scientific national group 2 (Raggruppamento Scientifico Nazionale 2, RSN2).
The INAF community holds an internationally relevant position in the field of stellar astrophysics, playing a leading role from theoretical, observational, and experimental perspectives.
The variety of...
Thanks to their ubiquity, brightness, and the fact that they are made of stars with similar properties, star clusters have been used as astrophysical laboratories or test particles in an impressive range of research domains. However, we still do not understand fundamental details of their formation and evolution: a list of unsolved problems and apparently isolated mysteries has been...
Local Group dwarf galaxies provide valuable information about the early Universe through the detailed study of their resolved stellar populations. I will present some of the latest results concerning the the star formation history and variable stars content of nearby galaxies. In particular, I will show how RR Lyrae stars can be used to constrain the early chemical evolution and the early star...
Pulsating stars are pivotal both as primary distance indicators for calibrating the cosmic distance ladder and as reliable stellar population tracers. Their intrinsic variability and the relations between pulsation properties and evolutionary parameters make them excellent probes for studying galactic evolution and star formation. The modeling, both from an evolutionary and pulsation point of...
The thermally-pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch (TP-AGB) stars are considered tracers of the intermediate-to-old populations in a galaxy, as they cover a broad range of stellar masses (M ~ 1-8 M$_\odot$). Moreover, and even more importantly, their classification in oxygen- (O-) and carbon-rich (C-rich) stars can serve as useful galaxy diagnostics. Indeed, the efficiency of the physical...
Type II Cepheids(T2Cs) are the less used counterparts of classical Cepheids(CCs), which provide the primary calibration of the distance ladder for measuring H0 in the local Universe. In the era of the `Hubble tension', T2Cs together with the RRLyrae stars and the tip of the red giant branch(TRGB) can potentially provide non-CC-dependent calibration of the cosmic distance ladder.
Our goal is...
Since the discovery of the first exoplanet more than 5000 exoplanets have been detected. This indicates that planet formation is a robust mechanism and nearly every star in our Galaxy hosts a system of planets. However, little is known about the chemical processes which were at work during the star and planet formation process, and which concurred to determine the chemical composition of the...
In the past two decades, the exploration of Milky Way (MW) satellites has intensified due to the availability of wide-field deep panchromatic photometric surveys carried out with the new generation of telescopes. The application of high-performance overdensity detection techniques on extensive datasets has significantly increased our knowledge of stellar systems residing in the MW halo. These...
The Gaia mission astrometric and photometric data releases have revolutionized our knowledge about the Milky Way. The discoveries of ancient merging episodes with a range of satellites and progenitor galaxies, such as Gaia-Enceladus, Sequoia, Kraken and others, led to new insights on the formation of the Galactic halo. We investigated pulsational, photometric, kinematic and chemical properties...
Labeled as M3 in the ESA Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program, the PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) satellite is scheduled for a launch with Ariane 6 from French Guyana at the end of 2026. Although conceived and preliminary designed 16 years ago, when the research on exoplanets was at his infancy, the PLATO mission main scientific objectives continue to be unachieved by other...
Sub-Neptune and Neptune-sized Exoplanets exhibit a more and more surprising wide diversity of masses and bulk density. Determining their internal composition is, actually, a key parameter that can provide insights into whether these planets are predominantly composed of volatile materials or if they have significant amounts of denser substances such as water or rocky materials. Such...
Microlensing is a specific case of gravitational lensing in which we observe an apparent amplification of the brightness of the source in a typical bell-shaped light curve. Microlensing enables us to study a variety of objects; in particular, it is the most promising technique for finding Earth-mass extrasolar planets located beyond the snowline.
The computation of microlensing light curves...
