Related papers: Galaxies and the Local Universe with WFXT
While the exceptional sensitivity of Chandra and XMM-Newton has resulted in revolutionary studies of the Galactic neighborhood in the soft (<10 keV) X-ray band, there are many open questions. We discuss these issues and how they would be…
Dwarf galaxies provide opportunities for drawing inferences about the processes in the early universe by observing our "cosmological backyard"-the Local Group and its vicinity. This special issue of the open-access journal Advances in…
Massive stars are key ingredients in the evolution of the Universe. Yet, important uncertainties and limits persist in our understanding of these objects, even in their early phases, limiting their application as tools to interpret the…
Star clusters are fundamental units of stellar feedback and unique tracers of their host galactic properties. In this review, we will first focus on their constituents, i.e.\ detailed insight into their stellar populations and their…
We find no evidence for the presence of genuinely young galaxies in our Local universe. We argue that the metal deficiencies and the behavior of the N/O and C/O ratios meet several plausible explanations involving the primary and secondary…
Projected in the sky, galaxies are spatially-resolved objects. To understand how they formed and evolve it is necessary to study the spatial distribution of their observables. In this review talk, we briefly describe some scaling relations…
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…
Clusters of galaxies can be used for very different kinds of cosmological tests. I review a few of the methods: determination of cluster masses and dark matter content, metal enrichment and its connection to the origin of the intra-cluster…
A cosmologically significant population of very luminous high-redshift galaxies has recently been discovered at submm wavelengths. Advances in submm detector technologies have opened this new window on the distant Universe. Here we discuss…
Research done during the previous century established our Standard Cosmological Model. There are many details still to be filled in, but few would seriously doubt the basic premise. Past surveys have revealed that the large-scale…
We present arguments indicating that galaxies and their clusters should be considered as open developing systems. Galaxies interact with the intergalactic medium and are not in a virial equilibrium (which is determined by the gravity and…
Rich clusters of galaxies are the most massive virialized systems known. Even though they contain only a small fraction of all galaxies, rich clusters provide a powerful tool for the study of galaxy formation, dark matter, large-scale…
Gravitational Lensing is an efficient tool to probe: the mass distribution of collapsed systems: galaxies and clusters; high redshift objects thanks to the gravitational amplification; and the geometry of the Universe. I will review here…
Gravitational lensing has become one of the most interesting tools to study the mass distribution in the Universe. Since gravitational light deflection is independent of the nature and state of the matter, it is ideally suited to…
Clusters of galaxies are the most recently assembled, massive, bound structures in the Universe. As predicted by General Relativity, given their masses, clusters strongly deform space-time in their vicinity. Clusters act as some of the most…
We discuss the central role played by the X-ray study of hot baryons within galaxy clusters to reconstruct the assembly of cosmic structures and to trace the past history of star formation and accretion onto supermassive Black Holes (BHs).…
The last 20 years have seen an explosion in our understanding of the large-scale distribution and motions of galaxies in the nearby universe. The field has moved from a largely qualitative, morphological description of the structures seen…
Gravitational Lensing is a UNIQUE tool to constrain the mass distribution of collapsed structures, this is particularly true for galaxies, either on a case by case basis using multiple images of background sources (such as quasars), or…
The Wide Field X-Ray Telescope (WFXT) is a medium-class mission designed to be 2-orders-of-magnitude more sensitive than any previous or planned X-ray mission for large area surveys and to match in sensitivity the next generation of…
A hot phase of the interstellar medium has now been detected and studied in several objects through its X-ray emission. A proper assessment of its characteristics is relevant for our understanding of several aspects of galaxy properties,…