Related papers: Challenges in Stellar Population Studies
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…
The goal of this article is to summarize the current state of play in the field of radio pulsar statistics. Simply put, from the observed sample of objects from a variety of surveys with different telescopes, we wish to infer the properties…
Many, possibly most, stars form in binary and higher-order multiple systems. Therefore, the properties and frequency of binary systems provide strong clues to the star-formation process, and constraints on star-formation models. However,…
The details of bulge formation via collapse, mergers, secular processes or their interplay remain unresolved. To start answering this question and quantify the importance of distinct mechanisms, we mapped a sample of three galactic bulges…
We discuss recent observations of stars located close to the symmetry plane of the Milky Way, and examine them in the context of theories of Galaxy formation and evolution. The kinematics, ages, and compositions of thin disk stars in the…
We investigate the nature of stellar populations of major galaxy mergers between late-type spirals considerably abundant in interstellar medium by performing numerical simulations designed to solve both the dynamical and chemical evolution…
We review current progress in the study of the stellar populations of early-type galaxies, both locally and at intermediate redshifts. In particular, we focus on the ages of these galaxies and their evolution in hopes of determining the…
A series of population models are designed to explore the star formation history of gas-rich, low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies. LSB galaxies are unique in having properties of very blue colors, low H$\alpha$ emission and high gas…
Over the last decades, evolutionary population synthesis models have powered an unmatched leap forward in our understanding of galaxies. From dating the age of the first galaxies in the Universe to detailed measurements of the chemical…
The near-infrared spectral region is becoming a very useful wavelength range to detect and quantify the stellar population of galaxies. Models are developing to predict the contribution of TP-AGB stars, that should dominate the NIR spectra…
This chapter summarizes our current understanding of the stellar population properties of bulges and outlines important future research directions.
This review deals with stellar population models computed by means of the evolutionary synthesis technique that was pioneered by Beatrice Tinsley roughly three decades ago. The focus is on the simplest models, the so called Simple Stellar…
Their ubiquity and extreme densities make star clusters probes of prime importance of galaxy evolution. Old globular clusters keep imprints of the physical conditions of their assembly in the early Universe, and younger stellar objects,…
This paper addresses the questions of what we have learned about how and when dense star clusters form, and what studies of star clusters have revealed about galaxy formation and evolution. One important observation is that globular…
Star formation lies at the center of a web of processes that drive cosmic evolution: generation of radiant energy, synthesis of elements, formation of planets, and development of life. Decades of observations have yielded a variety of…
Determining the properties of old stellar populations (those with age >1 Gyr) has long involved the comparison of their integrated light, either in the form of photometry or spectroscopic indexes, with empirical or synthetic templates. Here…
We show observations obtained with the integral field spectrometer OASIS for the central regions of a sample of barred galaxies. The high spatial resolution of the instrument allows to distinguish various structures within these regions as…
Most stars form in highly clustered environments within molecular clouds, but eventually disperse into the distributed stellar field population. Exactly how the stellar distribution evolves from the embedded stage into gas-free associations…
Determining the demographics of the Galactic planetary nebula (PN) population is an important goal to further our understanding of this intriguing phase of stellar evolution. The Galactic population has more than doubled in number over the…
Understanding the galaxy in which we live is one of the great intellectual challenges facing modern science. With the advent of high quality observational data, the chemical evolution modeling of our galaxy has been the subject of numerous…