Dynamical Evolution of Star Clusters - Confrontation of Theory and Observations (International Astronomical Union Symposia, 174)

This volume reviews recent progress in the study of dynamics of star clusters. The meeting focused on the enormous progress of both the observation and the theoretical modeling of star clusters. New results from the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope (HST) include the mass function down to the hydrogen burning limits, white dwarf sequence, and central density profiles of `post-collapse' clusters by star counts. On the theoretical side, this symposium saw the first direct evidence of gravothermal oscillation through N-body simulation, which was made possible by GRAPE-4, the dedicated special-purpose computer for N-body simulation. Numerical techniques to combine stellar evolution and dynamical evolution of the cluster were presented. The book will be of primary interest to astrophysicists. Read more