Related papers: Working Group Summary - Local Universe
The next generation of multi-object spectrographs (MOS) will deliver comprehensive surveys of the Galaxy, Magellanic Clouds and nearby dwarfs. These will provide us with the vast samples, spanning the full extent of the Hertzsprung-Russell…
Star clusters are ideal tracers of star formation activity in systems outside the volume that can be studied using individual, resolved stars. These unresolved clusters span orders of magnitude in brightness and mass, and their formation is…
Microlensing observations have now become a useful tool in searching for non--luminous astrophysical compact objects (brown dwarfs, faint stars, neutron stars, black holes and even planets). Originally conceived for establishing whether the…
We present here a brief summary of the currenly on-going IFU surveys of galaxies in the Local Universe, describing their main characteristics, including their sample selections, instrumental setups, wavelength ranges, and area of the…
This paper summarizes the discussions, presentations, and activity of the Future Light Sources Workshop 2012 (FLS 2012) working group dedicated to Electron Sources. The focus of the working group was to discuss concepts and technologies…
We present a review of recent studies of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy, in particular based on large samples of non-kinematically selected stars with available proper motions. The Milky Way is argued to be a reasonable…
Our understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary systems has made major advances in the past decade. This progress has been driven in large part by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), which has given us an…
The observed properties of galaxies are strongly dependent on both their total stellar mass and their morphology. Furthermore, the environment is known to play a strong role in shaping them. The galaxy population in the local universe that…
Abridged - We quantify the effect of the galaxy group environment (for 12.5 < log(M_group/Msun) < 14.0) on the star formation rates of the (morphologically-selected) population of disk-dominated local Universe spiral galaxies (z < 0.13)…
The ISO and Spitzer space observatories yielded a treasure trove of data on dust and ices covering dust grains. Now Herschel, and soon SOFIA and ALMA, will provide unprecedented views of the molecular world of the interstellar medium (ISM).…
(abridged) Predictions of the Concordance Cosmological Model (CCM) of the structures in the environment of large spiral galaxies are compared with observed properties of Local Group galaxies. Five new most probably irreconcilable problems…
Clusters of galaxies are studied from a theoretical point of view, comparing with observational results whenever possible. The problem is approached both analytically as well as by means of high-resoultion numerical simulations. The dark…
This review aims to give an overview of the contribution of the Hubble Space Telescope to our understanding of the detailed properties of Local Group dwarf galaxies and their older stellar populations. The exquisite stable high spatial…
In recent years, exciting developments have taken place in the identification of the role of cosmic rays in star-forming environments. Observations from radio to infrared wavelengths and theoretical modelling have shown that low-energy…
We present a framework for forecasting cosmological constraints from future neutral hydrogen intensity mapping experiments at low to intermediate redshifts. In the process, we establish a simple way of comparing such surveys with optical…
The feedback effects of massive stars on their galactic and intergalactic environments can dominate evolutionary processes in galaxies and affect cosmic structure in the Universe. Only the Local Group offers the spatial resolution to…
This paper combines observational datasets and cosmological simulations to generate realistic numerical replicas of the nearby Universe. These latter are excellent laboratories for studies of the non-linear process of structure formation in…
We investigate the clustering properties and close neighbour counts for galaxies with different types of bulges and stellar masses. We select samples of "classical" and "pseudo" bulges, as well as "bulge-less" disk galaxies, based on the…
The alignments between galaxies, their underlying matter structures, and the cosmic web constitute vital ingredients for a comprehensive understanding of gravity, the nature of matter, and structure formation in the Universe. We provide an…
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…