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The properties of Globular Clusters and of their stellar population provide fundamental information (that cannot be gathered in other ways) on the environment where galaxies formed (including our own Galaxy), on Galactic formation processes, and are a basic ingredient for the understanding of the stellar populations in external galaxies and in our own Galaxy. The advent of space telescopes and ground-based 10-m size telescopes has provided a huge amount of data, spanning the range of wavelengths from radio to X-rays. The development of astrometrical techniques, and the availability of multifiber high resolution spectrographs allows astrometry and observational kinematics, with radial velocities and proper motions, both from the ground and with HST, measured for up to 10,000 stars per cluster. Large-field imaging cameras now routinely provide photometric data for up to a few hundred thousand stars per cluster. HST and interferometric techniques provide a deep view in the very center of dense stellar systems. A complete inventory of kinematic and photometric properties, from X-ray to near-infrared, of all luminous stars from the very center to the outskirts of clusters and nearby galaxies is now a reality. And an increasing number of catalogs of kinematic and photometric data are now available on the Web. There is a significant progress in the determination of geometrical distances to Globular Clusters, which will provide a solid foundation for the calibration of their ages and an important step in the distance ladder, both with a significant impact in cosmology. The Web pages of the Padova Globular Cluster Group have the main purpose of updating on the work in progress at the Astronomy Department of the University of Padova, and of providing the astronomical community with the photometric databases (both from groundbased and space observations) that we are building within the projects on Globular Cluster kinematics and stellar population we are involved in: - Wide field multiwavelenght imaging from the cluster core to the outskirts; - High accuracy astrometry and proper motion measurements of Globular Cluster stars; - High accuracy radial velocity measurements; - Globular Cluster geometric distances (from the comparison of proper motions and radial velocities) - Globular Cluster Ages; - Rotation and abundance anomalies of Globular Cluster Horizontal Branch Stars; - UV observations of Globular Cluster Horizontal Branch Stars; - Binarity fraction in Globular Cluster stars; - Blue stragglers in Globular Clusters; - Mass Function of Globular Cluster Stars. Padova, August 4, 2003 |
