Event details

Date
June 29, 2026  – July 3, 2026
Location
Sexten Primary School - Via Panorama 6, Sexten

Scientific Rationale

Observations of the local and high-z Universe confirm that star formation is an inherently clumpy and clustered process and that the formation of star clusters represents a key step in the star formation history of galaxies. Star clusters provide a fundamental tool to trace galaxy assembly and the gas properties at the time of their formation; the study of star clusters’ stellar content and evolutionary history, in turn, opens a unique avenue to investigate a number of fundamental questions concerning star formation and evolution, stellar dynamics, and the interplay between dynamical processes and the evolution of the cluster’s stellar content and population of exotic objects (such as millisecond pulsars, x-ray binaries, and the binary black holes eventually merging and emitting the gravitational waves detected in the last few years by LIGO).

This field is currently undergoing a revolutionizing phase. Large surveys carried out with ground and space based telescopes (such as Gaia, HST, Euclid, ALMA, ESO/VLT, JWST) have enabled unprecedented photometric and spectroscopic studies in the Local and high-redshift Universe and opened a new era in the study of the star-forming modes well within the reionization epoch allowing us to directly probe star cluster formation and constrain unprecedented/unexpectedly dense stellar systems as possible sites of GC formation. At the same time, a number of spectroscopic, photometric and kinematic studies have significantly expanded our view of local globular clusters revealing a new and complex chemo-dynamical picture of these systems: at odds with the traditional picture according to which globular clusters are chemically homogeneous, and characterized by a simple internal dynamical properties, these observations have revealed that globular clusters host multiple stellar populations differing in their chemical abundances and phase space properties.

The formation and evolution of star clusters is a multi-physics and multi-scale problem, involving star formation and feedback, galaxy formation and evolution, N-body dynamics, stellar and binary evolution. Hence, the proposed workshop aims at bringing together observers and theorists from both the local and high-z Universe communities and will include experts in all the research areas (star formation, stellar evolution, stellar dynamics, star cluster and galaxy formation) necessary to build a comprehensive picture of star cluster formation and evolution, explore the link between old massive globular clusters, local young star clusters, and high-z proto-globular clusters, and their connection to galaxy formation.

Organizers

SOC

Mario Cadelano (University of Bologna)
Francesco Calura (INAF Bologna)
Emanuele Dalessandro (INAF Bologna)
Michela Mapelli (Heidelberg University)
Florent Renaud (Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg)
Alison Sills (McMaster University)
Eros Vanzella (INAF Bologna)
Enrico Vesperini (Indiana University)

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Payment details

Registration Fee
-
Workshop code for bus and payment
BTTF26