@Danu so like wikipedia says "In the study of discrete subgroups of Lie groups, the quotient space of cosets is often a candidate for more subtle compactification to preserve structure at a richer level than just topological.
For example, modular curves are compactified by the addition of single points for each cusp, making them Riemann surfaces (and so, since they are compact, algebraic curves). Here the cusps are there for a good reason: the curves parametrize a space of lattices, and those lattices can degenerate ('go off to infinity'), often in a number of ways (taking into account som…