Dynamic and expansion of stellar clusters. The study: “The Gaia-ESO Survey: asymmetric expansion of the Lagoon Nebula cluster NGC 6530 from GES and Gaia DR2” of N. J. Wright (Keele University) recently appeared on MNRAS

Despite a significant fraction of stars form in stellar clusters counting hundreds to thousands of members, almost all the stars we observe today in the Milky Way is not associated to any stellar cluster. This occurs because newborn stellar clusters are typically dispersed in a few million of years by several intervening processes, such as the gravitational interaction among cluster

» Read more

Two LSST white paper are led by INAF-OAPA astronomers

LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) is the future of the astronomy in the time domain. LSST is a new-generation telescope that will be built on Cerro Pachon in Chile (2700 meters). It will be equipped with a primary mirror of 8.4 meters of diameter and an innovative camera able to observe an very large field of view, more than 49

» Read more

Star formation in the Vela. Published on A&A the study: “Low-mass star formation and subclustering in the H II regions RCW 32, 33, and 27 of the Vela Molecular Ridge. A photometric diagnostics for identifying M-type stars” of L. Prisinzano (INAF-OAPA)

In the Milky Way one of the main modes of star formation is in stellar clusters, which remain associated with their parental cloud for about 5-10 million years. This makes the star forming regions complex targets, characterised by rich stellar populations packed into small regions, sometime even with massive stars, and clouds whose morphology and properties are affected by the

» Read more