Environmental effects are believed to play an important yet poorly understood role in triggering accretion events onto the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) of galaxies (active galactic nuclei; AGNs). Massive clusters, which represent the densest structures in the Universe, provide an excellent laboratory to isolate environmental effects and study

We present new H- and K-band spectroscopy for the bulge of M31, taken with the LUCI spectrograph at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). We studied radial trends of CO absorption features (namely, CO1.58, CO1.60, CO1.64, CO1.66, CO1.68, CO2.30, CO2.32, and CO2.35) in the bulge of M31, out to a galactocentric distance of ∼100″ (∼380 pc). We find

Star formation is a vital phenomenon across all fields of astronomy, shaping our universe in all its vastness, from the small scale of exoplanets to the large scales of galaxies and beyond. There are nevertheless still many unknowns surrounding star formation because of its complexity. Spiral arms are important sites of star formation, yet in spite

The abundance of alpha and neutron-capture elements provide an important fossil signature in Galactic archaeology for tracing the chemical evolution of the Milky Way stellar populations. The combination with the astrometry and photometry from the Gaia data releases allow us to build an accurate time evolving chemodynamical picture of the Galaxy

The exquisite angular resolution and sensitivity of JWST are opening a new window for our understanding of the Universe. In nearby galaxies, JWST observations are revolutionizing our understanding of the first phases of star formation and the dusty interstellar medium. Nineteen local galaxies spanning a range of properties and morphologies across

We present the largest catalog to date of star clusters and compact associations in nearby galaxies. We have performed a V-band-selected census of clusters across the 38 spiral galaxies of the PHANGS–Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Treasury Survey, and measured integrated, aperture-corrected near-ultraviolet-U-B-V-I photometry. This work has resulted