SCYON Abstract

Received on August 5 2002

The Virtual Observatory as a Tool to Study Star Cluster Populations in Starburst Galaxies

Authors	Richard de Grijs (¹), Uta Fritze-v. Alvensleben (²)
Affiliation	¹ Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK ² University of Göttingen, Universitätssternwarte, Geismarlandstraße 11, 37083 Göttingen, Germany
To appear in	in the proceedings of the conference/workshop "Toward an International Virtual Observatory", Garching bei München (Germany), 10/06 - 14/06/2002, ESO conference series, eds. Górski K.M., et al.
Contact	grijs@ast.cam.ac.uk
URL	http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0207246
Links

Abstract

The cluster luminosity function (CLF) is one of the most important diagnostics in the study of old globular and young compact star cluster populations. We are currently using ASTROVIRTEL to obtain CLFs in several optical and/or near-infrared passbands, and colour distributions. This will provide us with a powerful analytical tool for the determination of the violent star and cluster formation history of galaxies: we will address questions related to the universality of the globular CLF, the time-scale of low-mass, low-luminosity star cluster depletion and its observability, and environmental effects affecting the shape of the CLFs and the efficiency of the depletion process. This has required the development of complex data mining tools, which are currently being incorporated in ASTROVIRTEL's querator.