The orbital decay and tidal disruption of a star cluster in a galaxy is studied in an analytical manner. Owing to dynamical friction, the star cluster spirals in toward the center of the galaxy. Simultaneously, the galactic tidal field strips stars from the outskirts of the star cluster. Under an assumption that the star cluster undergoes a self-similar evolution, we obtain the condition and ti...

The main goal of this thesis is to investigate the physical conditions of the star-forming environment in stellar clusters, especially · for the formation of low-mass cluster members. Embedded, young, and intermediate~mass stellar . clusters around Herbig . Ae/Be stars are sampled. Midand near-infrared observations identifying young stars and millimeter I interferometric observations probing de...

We studied the stellar population and star clusters around six regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in order to understand the correlation between star formation and cluster formation episodes. We used the stellar data base of the OGLE II LMC survey and the star cluster catalogues. The analysis of the colourmagnitude diagrams (CMDs) were used to estimate the ages of the stellar populatio...

I review the status of massive star formation theories: accretion from collapsing, massive, turbulent cores; competitive accretion; and stellar collisions. I conclude the observational and theoretical evidence favors the first of these models. I then discuss: the initial conditions of star cluster formation as traced by infrared dark clouds; the cluster formation timescale; and comparison of th...

We used star density maps obtained from 2MASS to obtain a sample of star clusters in the entire Galactic Plane with |b| < 20 •. A total of 1788 star cluster candidates are identified in this survey. Among those are 681 previously known open clusters and 86 globular clusters. A statistical analysis indicates that our sample of 1021 new cluster candidates has a contamination of about 50 %. Star c...

We investigate the star-formation properties of dynamically relaxed galaxy clusters as a function of cluster mass for 308 low-redshift clusters drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) C4 cluster catalog. It is important to establish if cluster star-formation properties have a mass dependence before comparing clusters at different epochs, and here we use cluster velocity dispersion, σ, as...

Starbursts produce large numbers of Young Star Clusters (YSCs). Multi-color photometry in combination with a dedicated SED analysis tool allows to derive ages, metallicities, EB−V, and masses including 1σ uncertainties for individual clusters and, hence, mass functions for YSC systems. The mass function, known to be Gaussian for old Globular Cluster (GC) systems, is still controversial for YSC ...