Abstract

Poster Abstract

P.5 Anastasaia Gvozdenko (Radboud University)

Chemical composition of a young massive cluster NGC 1569-B

Originally there were only two groups of the star clusters considered: open clusters and globular clusters (GCs), however a few decades ago the third group was identified – young massive clusters (YMCs). Massive clusters of stars, both young and old, are wonderful objects that provide us with clues for the various astronomical and cosmological questions. In particular YMCs are expected to shine some light on the formation mechanisms and evolution of GCs. Therefore, this makes YMCs the perfect labs for testing the existent formation of GCs theories.

Another use for the abundances of the clusters is to study the evolutionary histories of their host galaxies. Deriving detailed abundances of the distant galaxies becomes more challenging even if the integrated light spectroscopy is used. As the different populations within a galaxy are complicated to disentangle. However, the high light to mass ratio of the YMCs allows us to study their abundances up to 100 Mpc in distance. Additionally it is interesting to see whether the chemical abundance patterns that we see for our neighbourhood are also true for other systems. Hence it is important to study the extragalactic clusters in order to answer this question.

My ongoing project is about an extragalactic cluster located 3.4 Mpc away. This particular cluster is interesting because such clusters are rare in the Milky Way and even in the Local Group: there is not such massive cluster in our neighbourhood.