| Abstract : | Globular clusters (GCs) host several ultraviolet-bright stellar populations in various phases of stellar evolution, such as horizontal branch, post-horizontal branch, non-canonical blue straggler, white dwarf, and so on. These also include exotic objects such as cataclysmic variables, low-mass X-ray binaries, and other close binaries. GCs are the only stellar systems that are able to undergo nearly all the stellar dynamical processes over a time scale significantly shorter than the Hubble time. It is hence important to investigate such UV-bright sources in GCs to throw light on several topics, such as the late stages of low-mass stars’ evolution, stellar dynamics and its interplay with stellar evolution, cluster evolution, etc. In this talk, I will discuss how we used the excellent capabilities of AstroSat/UVIT, combining it with other datasets from HST, Gaia, and ground-based telescopes to carry out the census of exotic UV-bright members of the nearby, core collapsed GC, NGC 6397. The main UV-emitting sources in the cluster are found to be blue HB stars, BSSs, WDs, and a few gap objects (lying between the BS and WD sequences), including CVs. The cluster is found to lack EHB, BHk, and pHB populations. I will present an extensive discussion on the physical properties and the evolutionary status of the detected FUV sources. |
