The open clusters (OC) are gravitationally bound systems of a few tens or hundreds of
stars. In our Galaxy, the Milky Way, we
know about 3000 open clusters, of very different ages in the range of a few millions
years to about 9 Gyr.
OCs are mainly located in the Galactic thin disc, with distances
from the Galactic centre in the range 4-22 kpc and a height scale on the disc of
about 200 pc. Their chemical properties trace those of the environment in which
they formed and the metallicity is in the range -0.5<[Fe/H]<+0.5 dex.
Through photometry and spectroscopy it is possible to study relatively easily
the properties of the OCs and estimate their age, distance, and
chemistry. For these reasons they are considered primary tracers of
the chemical properties and chemical evolution of the Galactic disc.
The main subject of this thesis is the comprehensive study of several OCs.
The research embraces two different projects: the Bologna Open
Cluster Chemical Evolution project (BOCCE) and the Gaia-ESO Survey. The first is
a long-term programme, aiming at studying the chemical evolution of the Milky Way
disc by means of a homogeneous sample of OCs. The latter is a large
public spectroscopy survey, conducted with the high-resolution spectrograph
FLAMES@VLT and targeting about 10^5 stars in different part of the Galaxy and
10^4 stars in about 100 OCs. The common ground between the two
projects is the study of the properties of the OCs as tracers of the disc's characteristics.
The impressive scientific outcome of the Gaia-ESO Survey and the unique
framework of homogeneity of the BOCCE project can propose, especially once
combined together, a much more accurate description of the properties of the OCs.
In turn, this will give fundamental constraints for the interpretation
of the properties of the Galactic disc.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unibo.it/oai:amsdottorato.cib.unibo.it:6221 |
| Date | 27 February 2014 |
| Creators | Donati, Paolo <1984> |
| Contributors | Ferraro, Francesco Rosario |
| Publisher | Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna |
| Source Sets | Università di Bologna |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral Thesis, PeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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