Title: Aiming to Understand Compact Stellar Systems

Abstract:
In the last decade a rapidly growing number of compact stellar systems have been discovered 
whose properties (in particular mass, radius, and dispersion) bridge the previously well defined 
division between star clusters and galaxies. I will describe the first results from a project 
designed to illuminate the formation mechanisms of these objects. The Archive of Intermediate 
Mass Stellar Systems (AIMSS) project is assembling a large sample of compact stellar 
systems located in a wide range of galactic environments (from the field to dense clusters) and 
obtaining uniform size, mass, internal dispersion, and stellar population information for each 
object. With this comprehensive sample I will describe how these properties confirm that such 
objects are a "mixed bag" composed of the most massive star clusters and the surviving 
remnants of catastrophic galactic interactions.