Globular clusters: a chemical roadmap between anomalies and homogeneity

Abstract

For several decades, globular clusters have been considered the best example of simple stellar populations, hosting coeval and chemical homogeneous stars. The last decade of spectroscopic and photometric studies has revealed a more complex view of their chemical composition, with a high level of homogeneity in their iron content but star-to-star variations in some light elements. This contribution summarizes the main evidence about the chemical anomalies in the stellar content of the globular clusters, discussing also some peculiar objects with intrinsic dispersions in their iron content.