Current Activities | Research Interests | Publications | Links
Claudia Greco
born in November 19, 1979 in Modena, Italy, is a Post-Doc astronomer interested in variable stars in different stellar systems. During her formation, she has been working with Gisella Clementini searching and studying variable stars in old stellar systems in the Local Group: dwarf spheroidal galaxies, Galactic and extragalactic globular clusters, at the Astronomy Department and INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna. In 2003, she obtains her master degree summa cum laude on variable stars in the field and the clusters of Fornax dSph. In 2006, for four months, she has been collaborating with Mārcio Catelan at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica in Santiago de Chile. In 2007 she obtains the PhD with the thesis ''Looking for the building blocks of the Galactic Halo: Variable stars in Fornax and Bootes dwarfs and in NGC2419''. Currently, she has a Post-Doc position at the Observatoire de Genčve, working with Laurent Eyer and Nami Mowlavi, on variable stars in young stellar populations, such as open clusters.
Claudia Greco
Astronomical Observatory of the Geneva University
51, chemin des Maillettes
CH-1290 Sauverny
Current Activities Top of page
  • Claudia is working on open clusters of the Geneva database to search for low amplitude variable stars, working with Laurent Eyer, Nami Mowlavi, Gilbert Burki and the Geneva Gaia team.
  • Claudia is collaborating with Gisella Clementini about variable stars in old systems in the Local Group, expecially in the newly discovered dwarf spheroidal galaxies discovered by the SDSS.
  • Claudia has been observing at different telescopes, such as Magellan/Clay 6.5m, Las Campanas Observatory (Chile), Euler 1.2m, La Silla Observatory (Chile) and Mercator 1.2m, Roque de los Muchachos, Canary Islands, Spain and Loiano 1.5m, Loiano, Italy.
    • Research Interests Top of page
    Claudia's interest are variable stars as they are useful tools to investigate the stellar populations in a stellar system and to investigate the galaxy formation mechanisms.
    During her Ph-D,she has been studying variable stars in old stellar systems. In hierarchical models of galaxy formation, the halo of the Milky Way (MW) has been assembled, at least in part, through the accretion of protogalactic fragments partially resembling the present-day dwarf spheroidal (dSph) satellites of the MW. She focused on the identification of the possible ``building blocks'' of the Galactic halo, by investigating the RR Lyrae properties of a number of different stellar systems starting from relatively undisturbed dwarf galaxies (the Fornax dSph and its globular clusters), through distorted and tidally disrupting ones (the Bootes dSph), to possible final relics of the disruption process (the Galactic globular cluster NGC 2419), as well as in some dSph's recently discovered by the SDSS. The RR Lyrae stars, belonging to the old population (t > 10 Gyr), eyewitnessed the epoch of the halo formation, and thus hold a crucial role to identify the MW satellites that may have contributed to building the Galactic halo. She has been addressing the question of whether the properties of the RR Lyrae stars in these systems conform to the ones observed in the MW. If they do not, the Galaxy's halo cannot have been assembled by dSph-like protogalactic fragments resembling these present-day dSph companions of the MW
    Currently, at the Geneva Observatory, she is studying low amplitude variable stars in open clusters, managing the photometric database of open cluster avalaible in Geneva. The identification and the interpretation of variable and binary stars in open cluster can shed light on the evolution they follow. This research is carried out in the stimulating enviroment of the Geneva GAIA team.
    Claudia loves listening and learning foreign languages. She speaks Italian, English and Spanish and she is learning French and Portoguese.
    Publications Top of page
  • List Claudia's publication On ADS
  • Read Claudia's PhD thesis

    • More ...

    Links Top of page
  • INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna
  • Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universitā di Bologna
  • Departamento de Astronomia y Astrofisica, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
  • New submission on Astro-ph
  • ADS, Abstract service
  • International Astronomy Meetings