English

The Star Formation History of Late Type Galaxies

Astrophysics 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

The combination of huge databases of galaxy spectra and advances in evolutionary synthesis models in the past few years has renewed interest in an old question: How to estimate the star formation history of a galaxy out of its integrated spectrum? Fresh approaches to this classical problem are making it possible to extract the best of both worlds, producing exquisite pixel-by-pixel fits to galaxy spectra with state-of-the-art stellar population models while at the same time exploring the fabulous statistics of mega-surveys to derive the star-formation and chemical enrichment histories of different types of galaxies with an unprecedented level of detail. This review covers some of these recent advances, focusing on results for late-type, star-forming galaxies, and outlines some of the issues which will keep us busy in the coming years.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0701899,
  title  = {The Star Formation History of Late Type Galaxies},
  author = {Roberto Cid Fernandes},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0701899},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

To appear in the proceedings of IAU symposium 241, "Stellar Populations as Building Blocks of Galaxies"