Postdoctoral researcher
INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Padova
I received my PhD in Astronomy in 2019
from Padova University (Italy), and then I moved to Baltimore (USA)
to join the
Interstellar Medium* group at STScI as a postdoctoral fellow.
In 2022, I moved back to Padova where I work as a postdoctoral researcher
at the INAF-Astronomical Observatory.
My research focuses on the study of resolved stellar populations in nearby galaxies,
and the modeling of advanced evolutionary phases, such as the thermally pulsing asymptotic
giant branch (TP-AGB) and the core helium-burning phase.
I use stellar population synthesis simulations to calibrate stellar models,
and to interpret observations of resolved stellar systems.
We describe a large simulation of the stars to be observed by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The full catalogs containing 10.6 billion single stars and 1.61 billion binary systems are available at the NOIRLab Astro Data Lab and are accompanied by Jupyter Notebook Tutorials .
Catalogs: Single stars and Binary stars
Dal Tio P., Pastorelli G. et al. 2022, ApJS, 262, 22
We extend the calibration of TP-AGB models in the SMC to the more metal-rich LMC galaxy. We focus on the effect of the third dredge-up, and we identify a best-fitting model that matches the star counts and the luminosity functions of the observed AGB stars in the LMC Calibrated stellar isochrones publicly available through the CMD web interface.
Pastorelli G. et al. 2020, MNRAS 498, 3283
We put stringent constraints on mass loss and third dredge-up by comparing the star counts and the luminosity functions of the observed AGB stars in the SMC with their synthetic counterparts. For this work we calculated more than 30 sets of TP-AGB tracks and we identify two best-fitting models. The calibrated stellar isochrones are available via the CMD web interface.
Pastorelli G. et al. 2019, MNRAS, 485, 5666
We present a photometric tool (the Gaia-2MASS diagram) to identify the evolutionary stage, the chemical types and the initial masses of the population of Long Period Variables in the LMC. The interpretation of this diagram is based on population synthesis simulations and TP-AGB evolutionary tracks calibrated in the Magellanic Clouds.
Lebzelter T., Mowlavi N., Marigo P., Pastorelli G. et al. 2018, A&A, 616, L13
We derive the spatially-resolved SFH of the main body of the SMC, using the deep near-infrared photometry of the Vista survey of the Magellanic Clouds. The outcome of this work is a robust estimate of how star formation rate, metallicity, distance, and extinction vary across the SMC.
Rubele, S., Pastorelli, G., et al. 2018, MNRAS 478, 5017
