Related papers: Constraints on Galaxy Structure and Evolution from…
The fact that galaxy distribution exhibits fractal properties is well established since twenty years. Nowadays, the controversy concerns the range of the fractal regime, the value of the fractal dimension and the eventual presence of a…
Motivated by recent progress in the study of early-type galaxies owing to technological advances, the launch of new space telescopes and large ground-based surveys, we attempt a short review of our current understanding of the recent…
The knowledge of the intrinsic three-dimensional (3D) structure of galaxy components provides crucial information about the physical processes driving their formation and evolution. In this paper I discuss the main developments and results…
Observations of the nearby large galaxies that can be examined in particularly close detail suggest that many have small stellar luminosity fractions in bulges and haloes. Simulations of galaxy formation tend to produce considerably larger…
Our view of the properties of galaxies is strongly affected by the way in which we survey for them. I discuss some aspects of selection effects and methods to compensate for them. One result is an estimate of the surface brightness…
A large fraction of known galaxy-lens systems require a component of external shear to explain the observed image geometries. In most cases, this shear can be attributed to a nearby group of galaxies. We discuss how the dark-matter mass…
On the basis of a recent cosmological model, the puzzle of galactic rotational velocities at their edges is explained without invoking dark matter. A rationale for the existence of structures like galaxies and superclusters is also…
From the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 5 (DR5), we extract a sample of 4594 galaxies at redshifts 0.02<z<0.03, complete down to a stellar mass of M=10^10 Msol. We quantify their structure (Sersic index), morphology (Sersic…
The kinematics and elemental abundances of resolved stars in the nearby Universe can be used to infer conditions at high redshift, trace how galaxies evolve and constrain the nature of dark matter. This approach is complementary to direct…
The structure, kinematics and dynamics of the Galactic stellar halo are reviewed including evidence of substructure in the spatial distribution and kinematics of halo stars. Implications for galaxy formation theory are subsequently…
Observations of circumstellar disks around stars as a function of stellar properties such as mass, metallicity, multiplicity, and age, provide constraints on theories concerning the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Utilizing…
The chemical abundances in the atmosphere of a star provide unique information about the gas from which that star formed, and, modulo processes that are not important for the vast majority of stars, such as mass transfer in close binary…
This review aims to give a summary of our understanding of galaxy evolution as infered from studies of nearby galaxies; how observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope have contributed significantly to our detailed understanding of…
We present a pedagogical review on the formation and evolution of galaxies in groups, utilizing observational information from the Local Group to galaxies at z~6. The majority of galaxies in the nearby universe are found in groups, and…
Rich clusters of galaxies, the largest virialized systems known, provide a powerful tool for the study of cosmology. Some of the fundamental questions that can be addressed with clusters of galaxies include: how did galaxies and large-scale…
Gravitational lensing has now become a popular tool to measure the mass distribution of structures in the Universe on various scales. Here we focus on the study of galaxy's scale dark matter halos with galaxy-galaxy lensing techniques:…
Galaxy masses play a fundamental role in our understanding of structure formation models. This review addresses the variety and reliability of mass estimators that pertain to stars, gas, and dark matter. The different sections on masses…
The nature of dark matter is one of the outstanding questions of astrophysics. The internal motions of member stars reveal that the lowest luminosity galaxies in the Local Group are the most dark-matter dominated. New large datasets allow…
I review the standard paradigm for understanding the formation and evolution of cosmic structure, based on the gravitational instability of dark matter, but many variations on this basic theme are viable. Despite the great progress that has…
The analysis of images (of obtained in various ranges of the lengths of waves) of luminous objects in the Universe by means of a method of multilevel dynamic contrasting led author to the conclusions: a) the structures of all observable…